Today we say goodbye to a singular brilliant analytical mind
– my coach.
Dick coached me from the age of 16 till I departed for the
US, and after that he remained a constant source of information, ideas; always
challenging the way I thought, my plans and the assumptions I made. Your
relationship with Dick could not be passive!
“Inquiring minds” has now gone way beyond a cliché, but Dick
epitomised the term, and I never came across a “thinking” person who was not captivated
by his inquiring mind, even though it was incredibly difficult to “keep up with
him” at times
The impact of his thinking continued in the thinking of
athletes he coached, when they in turn became coaches
Some of the athletes I worked with, who now coach, knew Dick
and his importance to my development (such as Club members Mick and Peter
Wishart); some did not (like Harry King and Troy Douglas), but either way, Dick
is “present” in whatever they feel they may have got from me, and its impact on
their coaching
Something about Dick I think led many of us to become
coaches, and former Cambridge Harrier Club members such as Chris Colman (working
with exceptional students at Mill Hill School) and John Hillier (arguably the
most accomplished British throws coach), are a couple of examples.
Dick was a “fixture” at Crystal Palace in the ‘70 s working
with such talented young horizontal jumpers as Graham Byham, Chris Colman,
Trevor Wade and Steve White; and at the same time sending countless Tulse Hill
school boys to the English Schools Championships.
There is going to be a number of young throwers in South
Wales “lost” for a while, and with absolutely no disrespect to whoever coaches
them in the future, they will only begin to really appreciate what they had in
Dick as time passes – I never met anyone who thought the way he did
I last saw him a couple of years when we were both staying
with Chris and Marion Colman – the conversations were diverse and stimulating
(and exhausting!) and us younger ones tired long before he did, and he was not
beyond demonstrating his ideas. The video attached here, from a couple of years
ago (when close to the age of 80!), shows him trying to get across lower leg
action in sprinting.
Not all his original thinking centred on track and field
athletics – Dick lived with us for a while when he was teaching locally, and no
matter what he had put me through in training on Sunday morning, the afternoon would
find us back in the park with a cricket or rugby ball working on some new idea,
or trying to analyse something he had seen in a recent game.
As all Welshmen, Dick was passionate about his rugby, and when
he first moved to London he naturally joined London Welsh rugby club; and he
continued playing to an age when most of us were considering retiring from work!
He “suffered” mightily in the Welsh lean years, but in the early ‘70s couldn’t
have been prouder of the Welsh influence on the successful Lions tours of that
time
Back in the pre – email days, one of my big joys was to
receive a beautifully hand written letter summarizing the past rugby season.
He had a deep interest in holistic medicine, and swore by
the power of crystals, and the effect on his health. A great joy for him was to
go to Glastonbury, when visiting the Colmans – I got to experience it one time,
and I was “hooked”!
Alongside his sporting passions and other diverse interests,
Dick was an accomplished “amateur” historian for which he had a website – his
particular passion was King Arthur, and the period of the mid to late first Millennium.
Though by no means a young man, he had the energy, vigour
and passion of a man half his age, which makes the shock of his accident even more
painful. Like a parent, one never considers what life would be without them
until faced with that challenge, and at the moment it is just too hard to say.
I do know his memory and impact will remain with those of us he met, and will continue
with those that we have touched.
Next to my father he was the most important and influential man
in my life.
His most recent e-mail (which arrived a week before his
accident) was typical: “the weakness
of the glide is that the kick of the glide gets slower the further it extends”;
“convinced that most important thing in discus technique is how fast the
thrower can rotate”; the similarity of the sprint action of Elaine
Thompson and Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce, and how it compared to Dafne Schippers;
and had I looked into Native American tribal natural healers for my condition.
I understand that the weather today will be quite “Welsh”,
and by coincidence as I finish writing this it is pouring with rain in the
Arizona desert.
If there is a Coaches Corner in the after-life, then they
are in for a heck of a time, and I envy them!
Thank you Dick. R.I.P.
