Winning ways!
IF SOMEONE tells you they have played for a first division football club, travelled the world on a double-decker bus with the British athletics team, and released a chart topping EP, your first instinct is to think they are pulling your leg. But that i
IF SOMEONE tells you they have played for a first division football club, travelled the world on a double-decker bus with the British athletics team, and released a chart topping EP, your first instinct is to think they are pulling your leg.
But that is exactly what one resident has done - and he's got the pictures to prove it.
Ken Woolcott, 93, of Pasture Road, North Wembley, began his sporting career in the 1930's as an amateur football player with the Hammersmith based club Old Latymerians.
But it was as an athletics coach that he found his true passion, training women in the long jump and sprinting, including the great British sprinter Lillian Board, an Olympic silver medallist.
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Mr Walcott said: "It was marvellous - all the athletes I worked with were wonderfully talented and warm people."
He remembers all the sportsmen and women he met over the years with great affection, but it was the tennis players who left the greatest impression.
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He said: "I met Bjorn Borg when he was 15 at a tennis tournament in Norwich. He was a marvellous boy - even at that age you could tell he was an incredible talent."
Towards the end of the 1970's Mr Woolcott transferred his sports prowess to the dancefloor and invented popmobility, a keep fit routine practiced to pop music, and found an unlikely fan in boxing heavyweight champion Frank Bruno.
Mr Woolcott said: "I met Frank at the opening of Harrow Sports Centre. At the opening I was showcasing popmobility, and Frank was dancing along.
"He was having a great time, but then his trainer came over and told me I was working him too hard - that made me laugh."
Mr Woolcott has kindly opened his vast collection of photo albums allowing the Times to publish just a handful of pictures that encapsulates his past.
If you are in any of the photographs or recognise someone please call the newsroom on 020 7433 6244 or email kate.ferguson@archant.co.uk
