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Clive Longe

Guyana-born, Clive was an outstanding all-round sportsman. Whilst stationed at RAF St Athan in the early 1960s, without any athletics background, the then Welsh decathlon record holder and former UK champion, Hywel Williams, a senior sports instructor at St Athan immediately identified Clive’s athletics potential.

Little did Hywel know that he had a future UK national record holder on his hands. Hywel said at the time: “I could see straight away that he had the ideal build for a decathlete, and I eventually convinced him that he should start training for the event.”

Within a couple of years, Clive won the 1964 Welsh decathlon title with Hywel, a winner of 13 Welsh titles across numerous events, including four decathlon titles, back in third. In the same year he broke his mentor’s Welsh record with 6342 pts, before going on to win silver in the 1966 Jamaica Commonwealth Games and set sixteen Welsh and eight British decathlon records during his career.

Clive enjoyed a brilliant season in 1966. In May he beat British record holder Derek Clarke, taking his UK record with a score of 7083 points. Just a month later, competing for Britain in an international match in Holland, he increased his UK best to 7114 while winning the match.

By August he was ready for the Commonwealth Games, in Jamaica, and he upped his UK and Welsh record for the third time in the year in taking the silver medal. He hadn’t finished yet, though, as he then went on to compete in the European Championships in Budapest finishing ninth this time despite breaking his British record yet again with 7160 pts.

He continued in 1967 where he had left off in 1966. At the British Universities Championships in June, and now a student at Loughborough, he again increased his British record to 7200 and then in July he represented the British Commonwealth in a match against the United States in Los Angeles and set his sixth UK record with a score of 7392 points.

His final and eighth UK record came in Kessel, West Germany when he scored 7451 points. The performance was also a Commonwealth record beating the mark set by Roy Williams of New Zealand who had beaten him to the gold medal at the 1966 Commonwealth Games.

He was also an outstanding shot and discuss performer taking both events in the 1966 Welsh championships. He also set two Welsh discus records ending with 48.92m in 1969 - further irony for his mentor, Hywel, who had previously set eight Welsh records in the event.

On Christmas Eve in 1986, while he was Bermuda's national athletics coach, he killed his girlfriend, before killing himself two days later. He was just 47 years of age.

Clive was posthumously inducted into our Hall of Fame in 2024

 

Clive Williams

Note that the decathlon scores referred to are the 1962 tables in use at the time of the performance