Grit of running man David helped him keep pace

Now retired and living in Church Stretton, he has written his autobiography, encompassing his life in athletics, and through eight different professions including running two self-employed businesses, working and teaching abroad.

He is a former Shropshire 1500m and 5000m steeplechase champion in the 1960s and 1970s and also ran for Wales.

"I was not a natural athlete at all and was no good at school. I didn't run for Shropshire schools as I was not good enough," says David, who is now 72.

"By sheer determination and a lot of training of up to 100 miles a week, four years later I was beating people who had won the schools championships.

"I got fairly good. In some of the road races I was up with the best of them. I have beaten people a lot better than me, particularly in the steeplechase. I had the technique and everything. I held my own against the best of them."

Among those he rated in the athletics world were his friend Jim Hogan.

"He was in the Mexico Olympics and didn't do very well there because of the altitude. He loved animals and was taken to a bullfight where the matador was tossed up in the air and landed dead and he shouted out 'Three cheers for the bull' because he hated that sort of thing. He should not have gone.

"David Bedford was another one. Both of them had less speed than I had and if they ran against me in the 400m I would beat them, but they both had tremendous stamina.

"Of them all Mike Wiggs probably had the greatest ability. He could run 800m in 1.48. When he went to the Tokyo Olympics he should have won that race as he was by far the best in the field. He was tripped up by the Americans who ended up first and third, and he ended up down the field."

With arthritis in the feet, David's running days are over despite the beckoning Stretton hills, but he makes a point every morning of getting out his two Nordic-type sticks and doing a 30-minute walk.

He is toying with the idea of doing a book about the history of Shropshire athletics, which would of course include the likes of Donnington's Robbie Brightwell and Oswestry's John Disley, who won a bronze in the 1952 Olympics.

"He should have got gold in 1956 because he was better than Chris Brasher, but he was suffering that day with pneumonia.

"Disley was on the list to go on the 1953 Everest expedition. He was first reserve. He didn't go as they had already got the team they wanted."

Away from the track, David started a job as a trainee improver gardener at Kew Gardens in 1960, and his various jobs to follow included being ground manager at the University of London Athletics ground.

David, who spent his early life at Ashford Carbonel, near Ludlow, and Crudgington, near Wellington, started writing his autobiography, which is called Life Through Corridors of Uncertainty, nine years ago.

"Friends said I had had a packed life and should write about it, so that's what I did. It's to keep the record straight for my family really. My kids didn't know much about my life, particularly my athletics career and so on."

Life Through Corridors of Uncertainty is available from Castle bookshop in Ludlow, Burway Books in Church Stretton, and at Bishop's Castle town hall. David says it is also available direct from himself for £9.99 plus £3.50 postage and packaging at 14 Beaumont Court, Church Stretton, SY6 6DT.

Having got his autobiography under his belt, David is now turning his thoughts to writing a novel, which he says will be about false memory, in which through auto-suggestion children can be made to believe things to be true when they are not.