11.03.1940 – 01.06.2023

 

Hockey played an important role in the life of David Jones, but he met far greater success in athletics as a sprinter.

 

Athletics Career

David won an Olympic bronze medal in the 4x100m relay at the 1960 Games in Rome, having narrowly missed a place in the individual 100m final. Two years later, he was fifth in the 200m race at the European Championships in Belgrade but won a bronze medal in the 4x100m relay. In the same year, he gained a silver medal in the 200 yards competition at the Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth and followed this with a gold medal in the 4×100 yards relay. In 1963 at White City, he was part of the Great Britain (GB) quartet that broke the world record in the 4×100 yards relay.

 

 

David won three consecutive Amateur Athletic Association (AAA) titles at 220 yards between 1959 and 1961. He was runner-up in 1962 and won his fourth title in 1963. He was a member of the Woodford Green Athletics Club and made a Life Member in 1968. The Club recalled him “as Woodford’s fastest man and one of Britain’s leading sprinters in the early 1960s”.

In the 100m semi-final at the Rome Olympic Games, he was denied a place in the final in a photo finish with Ray Norton of the USA, although there are photographs that seem to suggest he finished ahead of Norton. Jones was part of the 4×110 yards relay team with Peter Radford, Ron Jones and Berwyn Jones, who defeated the so-called invincible USA team (which included Bob Hayes, one of the world’s all-time great sprinters, having equalled the world 100 yards record of 9.3 secs at the age of 18) in 1963 at the White City Stadium during the Great Britain v USA match.

In 1961 at Southend on Sea, he became the holder of World Best performance over 150 yards in 13.9 seconds. He was not selected for the 1964 Olympic Games despite finishing in fourth place in the qualifiers in the 100m. Instead, he joined ITV’s track and field commentary team for the Games.

David was particularly proud of the decision at the Rome Olympic Games to attach their medals to silver chains, as they originally used to be. The Rome Games were the last to award medals on their own. But in Perth in 1962, the Empire and Commonwealth committee opted to for change and ribbons have had a place at every award ceremony since then.

 

 

Athletics Controversy

In 1964, Jones became involved in a disagreement with the athletics authorities. David was sent a letter by Robbie Brightwell, the British Athletics team captain, complaining about his behaviour at an International Athletes’ Club’s (IAC) training weekend at Timsbury Manor, Hampshire. This included the relay team (known as the ‘Flying Squad’) of which David was co-ordinator. The letter included allegations of misbehaviour and “attitude” that Jones strongly denied. He declared that the sub-committee that had met to discuss the matter (and which had sent the letter) was unconstitutional and called for a meeting of the full IAC committee to settle the issue.

On 5 March 1964, a statement was issued by the IAC secretary, J Salisbury, that “we now regard the incident as closed. I have no comment to make, and our agreed statement is that the letter sent to David Jones did not, in fact, represent the views of the IAC committee as a whole: therefore the committee dissociates itself from the views expressed, and regrets the situation which it has caused”.

Jones said that he was “satisfied 100 percent by the committee’s decision. I am very glad that my reputation has been unaffected and that the matter has been resolved as I had hoped it would be. As far as Robbie [Brightwell] and I are concerned, our relationship will be as athlete to athlete and as captain to, I hope, chosen athlete. The ‘Flying Squad’ have supported me all through and our resolve to form ourselves into a medal-winning squad at the Olympic Games is unshaken. We want, of course, the best of relationships with all other athletes as well as the national coaches and British Amateur Athletic Board.”

 

Puma Problems in Mexico

Having suffered a recurrent Achilles heel injury, David Jones retired from international athletics in 1966. At the 1968 Games in Mexico City, he was a member of the BBC commentary team while also working for the Sunday Mirror and the Daily Express. He was also retained by the sportswear company Puma and found himself in an adventure procuring running shoes for the Great Britain squad. 3,000 pairs of shoes manufactured by Puma were being detained by the Mexican authorities allegedly pending payment of customs duty.

The reasons behind the impounding relate to a feud between two brothers of the Dassler family who had begun a shoe manufacturing company in Herzogenaurach in Germany in 1919 called Geba for short. In 1948, the brothers fell out spectacularly and divided the now successful business. Rudi Dassler founded Puma and his younger brother, Adolph (or Adi) established Adidas, which he named after himself (Adi Das – sler).

In World War 2, Rudi had an office job on the Eastern front, while Adi stayed at home manufacturing barrels for anti-tank guns, as part of the war effort. After the War ended, Rudi was prosecuted by the Allies and imprisoned for a year, while Adi was fined. Rudi accused his brother of betraying him as a Hitler loyalist so that Adi might take greater control of the growing footwear business. The brothers did not speak to each other except when suing the other. The acrimony was unremitting. On their deaths, each was buried at opposite ends of the cemetery. Their competition led to unsurpassed improvement in the development of the running shoe.

Rudi developed a new design of running shoe (the bürstenschuhe) or brush shoe to adapt to the new rubberized tartan track that was unveiled in the summer of 1968. The shoe included 48 small pins only four millimetres in length, attached in six rows of eight to the sole. The design was kept under wraps for many months, aiming for as explosive an impact as possible. Rudi claimed that the design was his own work but David Jones suspected that a well-known designer was instead responsible, which Rudi disputed.

The new shoe was received with huge enthusiasm by those athletes who ran in them. However, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) rules limited to eight the number of spikes allowed in each shoe and refused to change the ruling with the Games so imminent. Rather optimistically, Puma had hoped that each row of its spikelettes would be considered a single spike. Rumours abounded that Horst Dassler, who had then taken charge of Adidas, bribed three members of the IAAF officials to bar the Puma shoes. David Jones warned that Horst Dassler was a man not to be crossed. David was a rarity in that he worked at times for both Puma and Adidas and quipped that he was “one of the few men ever to work for both sets of Dasslers and lived to tell the tale”. David and his fellow highly ranked British athletes of the 1950s and 1960s rubbed elbows with the higher-ranking IAAF officials of the time and were said to know the identity of the three alleged officials but kept their counsel.

In 1968, Adidas had built a factory in Mexico to provide running shoes for the upcoming Olympic Games, having won a concession from the Mexican Olympic Committee for Adidas to be the official sportwear brand. Puma’s modified shoes had to be imported and 3,000 items were impounded, pending payment of the necessary duty. Some alleged that Adidas encouraged the retention of the shoes, having pressed for the imposition of $10 duty for each pair of imported Puma shoes.

It was at this point that David Jones became involved in an audacious move to recover the Puma shoes for Great Britain’s athletics squad that had been confiscated on entry to Mexico. Supplied with an official GB uniform and given a letter of authority, David presented himself at the Customs compound in the early hours of darkness one morning. At first, his attempts to gain access were resisted by armed guards but reportedly his display of cash was more warmly received. He was allowed to retrieve the much-needed kit within two hours and, according to the Daily Telegraph, salvaged the athletics squad’s Olympic campaign with no questions asked by the grateful British Olympic Association.

David was also reportedly involved on behalf of Puma in persuading Bob Seagren, the world record holder in the pole vault to wear Puma shoes in the pole vault final in Mexico City. The only type available in his size were plain white. Seagren was superstitious would only wear black and white shoes. Jones is said to have painted a black curve in the Puma style on the white shoes and presented them to Seagren, who was prepared to don them (allegedly while still wet with the black paint) and in which he then won the gold medal, with an Olympic record. These exploits for Puma were said to be the reason why Asi Dassler was prepared to employ David as an executive for Adidas.

 

Hockey Career: Surbiton, Ghosts and Folkestone

David Jones was born on 11 March 1940 in Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire and attended Felsted School. He began his athletics there in the longer distances and in his first race, a cross-country event, he finished in 35th place. But he was soon discovered as a sprinter and later claimed that 300m was his maximum running distance.

David stated that, “after I left school, I was taken on at a local brewery on a new scheme for two lucky students to spend a whole year learning the trade from top to bottom. I was working terrible shift hours and had to combine that with the athletics training. At the matches and Games we were given free running spikes by Puma but that was it. We did get a uniform for the Games, I had to model it once in Piccadilly Circus. It was all good fun, we were all teammates and got on very well on and off the track, money never came into it. Yes, the top runners caught the eyes of the media and we got plenty of coverage, but that was about it”.

“My only regret is that because of the Rome Olympic Games I missed the all-school athletics championship so missed out on that title”.

Having gone through the preparatory and public school system, sport was a very important feature of growing up. “I was not very academic; I was best on the sports field, playing games. I was a very good hockey player; some said that had I not been sprinting, I would have made the Olympic hockey team on the right wing. I always played hockey during the winter and that is how I kept in shape and fit for the forthcoming athletics season. There was no taking time off for winter training and all that. As soon as the athletics training was over, I’d swap my spikes for my boots and my hockey stick. It’s a great game and there was a great social atmosphere, just like the rugby clubs. We’d often warm up in the local pub and then finish in the clubhouse bar. Obviously, we all wanted to win and enjoyed doing so, but it wasn’t the end of the world.”

David worked for a local brewery after leaving school and went on to become the Assistant Secretary of the International Athletes’ Club.

In hockey, David was a fine winger and had a spell with Surbiton Hockey Club. He was also the secretary and president of the Ghosts Hockey Club. “We were a touring side and would take care of any veterans sides visiting the UK. But the sport changed so much, artificial pitches etc., that we all finally decided to call it a day over a grand dinner in London”.

The Ghosts club was formed on 29 November 1911. With the subtlety with which the name was conceived, it was agreed that the club colours had to be all-white, with a badge of a white skull and crossbones on a black background (and vice versa). Very few rules were drawn up, but membership was by invitation only.

The Ghosts were regularly invited to participate at the Folkestone Easter Hockey Festival, having been first invited in 1925 and, after a brief hiatus, becoming regular attendees. In 1962, David was part of the Ghosts team invited as the guests of the Festival. This was reward for their appearance “with unfailing regularity since 1927”. They defeated Unlenhorster 2-0 and drew 3-3 with the Buccaneers and 2-2 with the Bacchanalians. The Festival XI defeated them 2-3 but only after the conversion of a penalty stroke with five minutes still to play.

David later enjoyed a cameo in what became a cause celebre at Folkestone involving sports commentator Neil Durden Smith. Neil recounted how one year, at 7.00am in bright sunshine, it was decided to take an early morning stroll along the Leas, Folkestone’s well-known cliff top promenade, with the players still in their dinner suits.

There they encountered an unattended milk float, the milkman evidently making early morning deliveries on foot. Three enthusiastically laid a wager of £5 each challenging Durden Smith to drive the milk float to the end of the road and back. He found that the keys were in the ignition and set off at high speed with a full load.

As he was making a turn to travel back he encountered David, who, using his sprinting prowess, had run along the road to the float to inform Durden Smith that the milkman had returned to find the float had disappeared. Jones encouraged Durden Smith to abandon the milk float there and then and to scarper.

 

 

However, this advice was rejected. Durden Smith returned along the promenade to encounter the milkman accompanied by two police patrol cars. One police officer was unimpressed with a dinner suited miscreant breezily wishing everyone a good morning on a sunny day. He was unprepared to let the matter rest and administered a breathalyser. Durden Smith was arrested and taken to the police station, where a urine sample confirmed that he had an excessive level of alcohol in his blood. He was charged with drink driving and driving without insurance!

The Ghosts celebrated their 60th anniversary in 1972 and were given the honour of representing the Festival Hockey XI at Folkestone. They held Real Club de Polo (Barcelona) to a 1-1 draw in what was described as “a somewhat disappointing game”. The Times reported that the Ghosts had their chances towards the end “and Morgan was once unlucky. He found the mark with a great shot only a split second after the whistle had been blown for a short corner. He might well have profited by the application of the advantage rule. Comic relief was provided a little earlier when David Jones broke his stick in a tackle and ran off for a replacement”.

In 1980, also at Folkstone, The Times reported that “the spotlight rested briefly on David Jones, a member of the famous British sprint quartet of the early 1960s. At outside right yesterday, he celebrated his 21st appearance at the festival by scoring a goal. Two of his earlier shots, delivered at high speed, unfortunately disappeared into the crowd”. Ghosts had a field day by scoring 10 goals without reply against Royal Leopold of Belgium, who, according to the newspaper, apparently underestimated the quality of English hockey and did not bring a very strong side.

In 1974, David was featured in the Daily Mirror when he was discovered to have streaked in a London park in celebration of his daughter Nicky’s birth. The headline in the newspaper hailed him the world’s fastest streaker, though it was by then 18 years since he had retired from international athletics. Streaking had become something of a familiar occurrence at sporting events that year. It first occurred in UK cricket on 22 March 1974 and one day later in football at Highbury, when Arsenal played Manchester City.

David became a regular holiday visitor to San Telmo in the southwest of Mallorca and took up permanent residence in his later years. Apart from a brief return to Britain, he eventually died on the island on 1 June 2023, at the age of 83. Notice of his death remarked that “he lived life to the full”. According to The Times, he was the ebullient sprinter who “exemplified the fun of the amateur age”. David was survived by his wife and daughter.