When Llyn Padarn overcame sinking feeling to host the 1958 Empire Games
Andrew Forgrave
WHEN Llanberis was announced as a venue for the 1958 Empire Games, it was greeted with a degree of apathy and some scepticism.
Rowing was not a sporting tradition in Wales and Llyn Padarn could be temperamental even in mid-summer.
Apathy concerns were misplaced but the scepticism wasn’t.
The lake, in the shadow of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), would bare her teeth before and during the competition.
Wales had been waiting a long time to host the event, the forerunner of the Commonwealth Games.
The country had been due to hold the 1946 games until World War Two intervened.
The 1958 event featured just nine sports. All but one were held in and around Cardiff, where the Arms Park was remodelled to host athletics and £650,000 was lavished on a new Empire Pool.
In the absence of a suitable location in South Wales for the rowing events, Llyn Padarn was handed the prize.
The lake, two miles long and overshadowed by mountains, could be serene one day and tempestuous the next.
The weather laid down an early marker when five buoys marking out the rowing course were sunk by gale-force winds in early July. The buoys - tubular scaffolding towers on barges - were swamped by “huge waves” and sank 80ft to the lake bed.
A “combined ops” recovery mission was mounted by the Army and Navy to “rescue” the rowing competitions. Over the course of eight days, Royal Engineers worked with Royal Naval divers from HMS Vernon to retrieve the stricken buoys.
In a “formidable and hazardous” salvage operation, divers fastened cables to the sunken buoys so that engineers could lift them to the surface.
Earlier, more than 100 soldiers from the Royal Engineers had arrived in the village to transform the lake into a rowing venue.
As well as building jetties, stands and marquees for the 2,000-metre course, they created a “township” on the banks of the lake to accommodate over 100 crew members, coaches and officials from the eight competing countries.
Among the engineers was Scotsman Stanley Craig, having not long returned from Christmas
Island where he’d witnessed at close hand Britain’s nuclear testing programme in the South Pacific.
After meeting a local girl, Audrey, he settled in Caernarfon and became a wellknown publican in the town. Having survived cancer, and now aged 89, he is set to collect Britain’s new Nuclear Test Medal.
Ahead of the racing, crack oarsmen from eight countries descended on Llanberis for training.
It was, noted the Western Mail at the time, reminiscent of pre-World War I regattas on Padarn, adding: “Their specialised and costly nature has kept them only a memory in these parts.
“This probably accounts for the public apathy of which some of the crews’ officials have recently complained. Llanberis, however, is beflagged for the occasion.
“Some people doubt whether crowds will pour into Llanberis.
“Local shopkeepers do not expect more than average holiday weekend trade.”
The pessimism was unfounded. Large groups of schoolchildren watched the crews train and bunting was erected across the village.
During competitions, an estimated 5,000 people watched the crews skim across Padarn for three days, perhaps lured there by the presence of royalty: spectator in chief was the Duke of Edinburgh.
Few rated Wales’ chances. But team manager Meyric
Thomas, a Neath solicitor who rowed in the Oxford crews of 1952 and 1953, had been judicious in his recruitment.
Explaining why he had selected old Oxonians like himself, he said: “There are only half-a-dozen rowing clubs in Wales.
“The majority of these operate on the sea and conditions do not give a very high standard.”
Despite only having 11 days of training, he forecast the Welsh oarsmen would “not disgrace themselves”.
Ahead of the games, the newly-established relay concept was launched.
Setting off on July 14 from Buckingham Palace, it travelled through England before visiting all 13 Welsh counties (at the time) on its way to Cardiff.
The opening runner was Dr Roger Bannister, the first subfour-minute mile runner.
He carried a 40cm silver-gilt and enamel baton, designed by Cardiff jeweller and decorated with daffodils, leeks and a red dragon.
Each runner carried the baton for a mile. It went through Llangollen, Wrexham, Flint and Llandudno before heading to Felinheli, where boys from Caernarfon’s grammar school took it into the town.
From there, the baton travelled on through Llanrug and Llanberis, before heading south to Capel Curig and Betws y Coed.
It was then passed down the west coast from Harlech to Dolgellau and Aberystwyth on its journey to Cardiff. A total of 664 athletes, including 32 schoolboys, were involved in the relay, which covered more than 600 miles over almost four days.
Flying in for the rowing events was the Duke of Edinburgh (inset, right).
He caught a Heron aircraft from London Airport to Valley, Anglesey, before piloting a naval helicopter on a 15-minute flight to Llanberis. A landing site in a field near the lake had been scouted in the days beforehand and the Duke made a “perfect landing” after making a slight detour towards Llanberis Pass.
“As the Duke’s helicopter appeared in the valley between Mount Snowdon, a huge crowd cheered and sang Welsh national songs,” recorded the Herald. He was greeted by Col Wynn-Finch, Lord Lieutenant of Carnarvonshire, as flag-waving children lined the landing area.
If Padarn was to have one of its notorious rough days, such conditions ought to have benefited the Scottish team, which had been training on Loch Lomond. The lake duly obliged but the Scots did not, failing to win a single medal.
While rowers struggled through heavy swells, the weather took its toll on the event’s infrastructure.
From his vantage point in the royal enclosure. The Duke was one of the first to notice that the floating judges and timekeepers box was slowly sinking.
Mounted on two pontoons, it was placed near the finish line. While one pontoon became submerged, the other held firm, leaving the box at a jaunty 45-degree angle.
The Birmingham Post observed: “The occupants clung desperately to the sagging structure while motorboats sped across the lake. Judges and timekeepers were able to clamber down and walk along the floating catwalk to the bank.”
The next race was delayed for nearly an hour while officials retreated to the nearby Press box. Local sages who’d muttered about the wisdom of using Padarn, shook their heads sadly.
Despite the near sinking, the rowing event was deemed a success. Llanberis had pulled it off. Attendances were good and Wales even managed to bag a medal – bronze in the Coxless Fours.
More Welsh success, of a kind, came in the blue riband Eights: winning bronze was the England team, coached by David Glyn Jones, a London insurance underwriter from Conwy.
The Duke stayed on to present medals to the competitors, before hosting a lavish cocktail party for them at the Faenol estate. After travelling to Cardiff for the climax of the games, he returned with the Queen to Gwynedd and Anglesey. Just four days after the rowing finished, on July 26, they officially proclaimed Prince Charles as the Prince of Wales, paving the way for him to be invested at Caernarfon Castle in 1969.
As for the 1958 Empire Games, it remains the largest ever sporting event held in Wales - and Wales the smallest country ever to have hosted it, and its successors.