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28/11/2021 00:00, In Blog / History /

It is with much sadness that we report the death on 26th November, of former Welsh 100 and 200 champion Terry Davies of Carmarthen Harriers. He took part in both the 1966 and 1970 Commonwealth Games. Terry was also an outstanding rugby player playing for Llanelli and London Welsh and he also won a Welsh B cap. Details of his illustrious sprinting career and personal reflections from fellow athletes friends are below:

• The funeral is at 2pm Llanelli Crematorium. Wednesday 8th December

Obituary and Image courtesy of Dr Hedydd Davies - Terry is in the middle of the front row of athletes.

Terry was a great character, athlete and coach. Terry joined Carmarthen and District Harriers Athletics Club in the early 1960’s and was a faithful member of the Club for many years. Carmarthen Harriers had a very strong senior athletics team when he was a prominent member, and he was a key member of all of Ron Evans’s many successful teams. He later joined Llanelli Athletics Club where for many years he was a very successful coach. As a sprints athlete he had a very successful athletics career.

In the Welsh senior championships, he won a total of nine medals, three of which were gold.

Welsh senior championships

Terry was selected to compete for Wales in the sprints events at two Commonwealth Games, Kingston Jamaica in 1966 and Edinburgh in 1970. At both Games he wore the red vest of Wales with pride and distinction.

Commonwealth Games Record

He was a great character, well liked and respected by all his fellow athletes. I had the honour to be a member of the 1970 Welsh Commonwealth Games team. Terry as an old hand had the job of showing us new boys around the site and in particular the cafeteria. He certainly enjoyed his food.

In 1966 I was teaching in London and for a time  was secretary of the London Carmarthenshire Society, and one of my tasks was to organise  a Sports night (which turned out to be the evening of the Aberfan disaster). Terry and Ron Jones were two of my guests that night. What a night it turned to be with Terry easily the star turn. When he retired, he became an outstanding athletics coach and coached for many years at the Llanelli track and achieved considerable success.

In 2000 when I was President of Welsh of Athletics, I had the honour and pleasure of presenting Terry at the Welsh Athletics AGM in Carmarthen with the Welsh Athletics Meritorious Award.A well-earned and richly  deserved award

Hedydd Davies, President Carmarthen and District Harriers Athletics Club

27 November 2021

Personal memories of Terry Davies, by Fred Bell. 

I have fond memories of Terry. One occasion worthy of recall is when Terry & myself qualified for a AAAs championships at the White City in London and Ron Evans, the Carmarthen Harriers stalwart and former Welsh AAA president, drove us up to London the evening before.

 

We booked into our hotel and Terry and I spotted an ice rink nearby and we decided that we couldn’t give the opportunity to ice skate a miss, as there was no such thing in Carmarthen in the 1960s. Not having skated before, we both spent more time falling over than skating, but we thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

Anyway when we returned to the hotel, Ron was waiting for us and didn’t look happy at all as we had wandered off without his knowledge. We thought that he might send us home if he knew that we had been ice skating. Not wanting to upset Ron we quickly decided that we would act drunk and say that we had been for a few beers.

 

So we proceeded to talk incoherently, propping each other up. But he was fuming and sent us straight to our room telling us how did we expect to perform well the following day. And why had he bothered to bring us all the way from West Wales at his expense for us to be ungrateful and end up drunk.

 

Well come the next day and we both did exceptionally well. Terry got to the finals and I got a PB. On the return journey Terry said to Ron that it’s a great idea getting drunk prior to a big race, if we both performed as well as we did, but Ron was still seething. But on crossing the border back into Wales we decided to tell Ron the true story and told him we could never lie on our own soil. Ron took it in good spirits but often reminded us of the story warning us never to repeat it. 

R.I.P Terry your buddy Fred