News
Jock Anderson has sadly passed away
19/08/2019 00:00, In Blog /
By Gwyn Williams
Welsh Athletics was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of coach Jock Anderson on Friday evening.
Scotsman Jock Anderson has been one of Britain's most successful coaches with a veritable “Who’s Who" list of successful British athletes to his credit. The list includes Christian Malcolm, Jamie Baulch, Doug Turner, Tim Benjamin and Kevin Williams
Jock's own sporting success was as a rugby player and a professional sprinter in Scotland. These competitive experiences did much to form his success as a sprints' coach in future years. As a rugby winger his 5 try haul in one game playing for Hawick RFC in the Scottish Borders remained a club record for many years. As a professional sprinter he was twice runner-up in the famous Powderhall Handicap Races.
Jock's uncanny ability to get his sprinters to ‘peak form’ at the right time, for the big races, was well known and down to the lessons learned from the world of professional racing. This plus Jock's own innate competitive nature was at the heart of his athletes success. Jock moved to Wales in the 1970's to work in the British Steel works at LLanwern. Wales was slowly but surely about to benefit from his skills as he built up a successful sprints' group to rival any in Britain. Jamie Baulch was the first to be guided by Jock on the long journey from young talented teenager to captain of the Senior team. At the World Junior Championships in 1998 Christian Malcolm won gold in both the 100m & 200m, a feat achieved by only a select handful of World athletes. Later that year Christian and Jock were guests at the IAAF Annual Award Dinner in Monte Carlo where Christian was named IAAF World Junior Athlete of the Year. Christian and jock had arrived on the world scene and together over the next 7 years Christian was to go onto many successes and become one of the most recognisable and admired British athletes in the world
As success came to Jock's sprint group it was not unusual to see athletes from other groups in the UK like Darren Campbell ,Mark Lewis- Francis and Dwain Chambers turn up to join Jock's athletes and feed off the special atmosphere and competitive nature of the group's sessions. This was testimony from world class athletes to Jock's reputation as one of the UK's leading sprints coaches.
Jock continued to be an ever present at National Championships, supporting former athletes Kevin Williams and Christian Malcolm on their own coaching journey. Christian, now based in Australia as Head of Performance for Australian Athletics, while Kevin has emerged as a leading sprints coach in his own right, with a number of Welsh Champions and International working under him.
Jock’s experience and ability to spot and nurture talent led to him being considered as one on of the greatest coaches that Wales has ever known, and will be greatly missed by everyone to had the pleasure of knowing him.
Welsh Athletics will provide a further update once funeral arrangements are known.