As the nation gears up for the Olympics 2012, LIZ LAMB unveils the amazing story of a 1936 Olympian from the North East who ran in front of Adolf Hitler and was a national and international cross-country champion
FROM pit village boy and son of a miner to representing Great Britain in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Jack Potts was a national treasure who brought great credit to the North East during a time of hardship.
A member of Saltwell Harriers, he represented Great Britain internationally as well as at the 1936 Olympics, which were opened by Hitler.
Yet for his nearest and dearest his amazing athletic career and achievements have remained clouded in mystery-until now.
His daughter Ann Brooker has compiled a book of her father’s sporting past after discovering a box of newspaper cuttings and other memorabilia following the death of her mother, and Jack’s wife, Grace. It led Ann, of Alnwick, on a quest to find out as much information about her late father as she could which has since culminated in the book abut his life which she hopes will now be archived in a local or national museum as a permanent record of his achievements.
She says: “When dad was alive he never talked about his athletic career, I heard it all from relatives. He was really modest. I knew he had run in the Olympics, my uncle told me that, but my father never talked about it.
“When my mother died I found a box of things in the loft and it showed me how famous he had been. I had not known until then just how much he had achieved.
“We have two sons, who knew my father well, and grandchildren and I thought it would be a good idea to write an athletics biography about him for them.” Following Grace’s death in 1997 Ann put an advert in the letters page of The Journal’s sister paper the Chronicle asking if anyone remembered Jack Potts.
She says: “The response was overwhelming. I had a call from a lady who used to push me around in my pram who lived in the same street.
“There was a gentleman who had gone to school with my dad and I went to see him in Catchgate and heard lots of school stories and I heard how my father got started in his athletic career.”
They were not the only people to get in touch.
“Replies came from neighbours, men who had been athletes at the same time and also from those who had known him during his subsequent business career,” says Ann. “In all I collected three file boxes of cuttings, letters and photographs. Lots of the stories in the book have come from people who knew him.”