The legendary British sprinter Ron Jones, who captained Team GB at the Mexico Olympics in 1968 and was part of the 4x110yd team that equalled the world record in 1963, has died at the age of 87.
After his illustrious track and field career, Jones moved into football, first as the chief executive of QPR in 1976 before becoming managing director at Cardiff and then Portsmouth.
But he will be best remembered for being part of the British team – alongside Peter Radford, David Jones and Berwyn Jones – who stunned a strong US contingent to equal the world 4x110yd record in 40.0 secs.
Writing in the Observer, Norris McWhirter said the performance was so good it made “the White City crowd explode with joy – just like in the old days”. The feat was even more impressive given the US team that day included Bob “The Bullet” Hayes, the world’s fastest man who would later win gold at the 1964 Olympics. It was a measure of Jones’s quality that when he faced Hayes in the individual 100yd dash earlier that afternoon he pushed him to the line.
“The mighty Hayes, who breaks all the rules of fast movement by rocking and rolling as he fights his pigeon-toed way down the track, was expected to pull away,” wrote McWhirter. “But nothing of the sort happened. In fact Jones fractionally closed on him and was only beaten by two foot on the tape.”
Hayes’s time was 9.5s, with Jones’s 9.6s. Such was Jones’s form that year he also set a Welsh 100m record of 10.30s – which stood for 27 years until it was beaten by Colin Jackson in 1990.
His great friend Lynn Davies, who won long jump gold in Tokyo 1964 and ran in the GB relay team with Jones in those Olympics, told the Guardian that Jones was an “inspirational character on and off the track”.
“Ron will be remembered for being one of Wales’s greatest ever athletes,” he said. “He was one of my heroes growing up and when we raced I could never beat him. He had such a smooth stride. And, remarkably, he did it all while working full-time as an accountant.”
Davies said that, when Jones was managing director at Cardiff City, he would even take fitness training with the players. “And he also did a great deal for young people in sport in Wales as chairman of Sports Aid Cymru Wales.”
“He was a very proud Welshman with a very warm and outgoing personality,” he added. “He loved company, and a glass of red wine. I have many happy memories of sitting with him and reminiscing about the good old days.”