Mel Watman
Athletics enthusiast who fulfilled a childhood journalistic dream
THE WORLDWIDE respect for athletics journalist Mel Watman, who has died aged 83, was second to none. For many he simply was Athletics Weekly, having written for the paper since 1954, editing it from 1968. He probably wrote more words on athletics than anyone else, including such volumes as The Encyclopaedia of Athletics and The History of British Athletics, acknowledged bibles of the sport.
Melvyn Watman was born in Hackney in 1938, the son of Alfred, a hairdresser, and Flora, a milliner. Both grandfathers had emigrated from Russia around 1900, representing a Jewish heritage of which Watman was always proud.
He and his mother and older sister Benita were evacuated to Bedford during the war, but he described his childhood as idyllic. His encounters with American servicemen, whom he saw as superheroes, led to a lifelong love of America. The family returned to live in Stoke Newington shortly after VE Day.
Watman’s passion for athletics was born in 1950 when he took part in a Hackney Downs School trip to the AAA Championships at White City. Watman recalled: “I saw great athletes like Arthur Wint, McDonald Bailey and Roger Bannister, and I was hooked. Suddenly I knew what I wanted to do in life. I would write on athletics, preferably for Athletics Weekly, and preferably as its editor”.
This was a time when the sport was as yet untainted by drugs or money, when professional writing meant toiling long hours over a manual typewriter, and when a young man could be inspired to devote his life to combining those two passions.
Watman began submitting articles to Athletics Weekly while still at school, and continued whilst training as a journalist at the Hatfield & Potters Bar Gazette. While still a teenager he co-founded the National Union of Track Statisticians with fellow Jewish Grafton AC club mates Alf Wilkins and Stan Greenberg. In 1959 Watman gained his diploma in journalism and in September that year was sent to Turin to report for The Times on the World Student Games.
During national service in the RAF he continued to write for Athletics Weekly at weekends and to edit its monthly offshoot, World Athletics. He saved up two weeks’ leave to go to the 1960 Rome Olympics as its youngest accredited reporter, and would report on every subsequent Olympics, including this year’s Games.
After demob in 1961, Watman was appointed to Athletics Weekly full-time, and in 1968 he became its editor, fulfilling a 17-year-long ambition. It was a labour of love to which he devoted inordinate amounts of time, with relatively little remuneration and to the detriment of his own health.
In 1984 he stepped down from the editorship to devote himself to writing, partly for health reasons and partly because reporting on athletics meetings and interviewing athletes gave him the most professional satisfaction. During his 16 years of editorship, the magazine more than doubled in both size and circulation. Olympic double gold medallist Daley Thompson credited the arrival of Athletics Weekly through his door as the only cause of his ever getting up before noon.
In 1987 Athletics Weekly was bought up by EMAP and Watman did not enjoy working under the new management. In 1988 he quit and joined a new rival magazine, Athletics Today, as co-editor. He also took on a range of freelance activities including assisting Thames TV and later Eurosport th their athletics coverage. Probably exacerbated by overwork over many years, Watman suffered a heart attack in 1993. That year he also founded the newsletter Athletics International together with fellow journalist Peter Matthews, and produced more than 800 issues over the course of the following decades.
But The UK market proved only large enough for one athletics magazine, and Athletics
Today folded in 1994. In the same year he underwent bypass surgery. In 1999 Watman resumed contributing to Athletics Weekly, now under new management.
He wrote several books on the history of the sport. These included The History of British Athletics (1968), The All-Time Greats of British Athletics (2006), five editions of the Encyclopaedia of Athletics, History of Olympic Track and Field Athletics (1996-2000), Official History of the Amateur Athletic Association (2011) and Official History of the Women’s Amateur Athletic Association (2012). He published his autobiography, My Life in Athletics, in 2017.
Watman’s colleagues recognised his exceptional achievements by electing him as Honorary President of the British Athletics Writers’ Association, and in 2013 he was inducted into the England Athletics Hall of Fame.
Watman was a recreational runner who completed the New York Marathon in 1980 and the inaugural London Marathon in 1981. He loved travelling with his devoted wife Patri
cia Master whom he married in 1973, and was close to his wider family. He enjoyed playing the one-armed bandits of Las Vegas, and teamed up successfully with a professional sports bettor, supplying the expertise that enabled them to outsmart the bookmakers.
I first met Mel and Patricia at their Stanmore home in early 2007, when he signed a school prize that I had treasured since 1968: the second edition of his Encyclopaedia of Athletics. For several years he attended the presentations of the Daniel Sacks Award for outstanding achievement of UK Jewish athletes aged 11-16, which I set up in 2010 in memory of my late son, who died in 2005, supported by the JC and its former sports editor Danny Caro. These took place at my flat in Finchley or the JC offices, and he was keenly interested in the achievements of Jewish athletes.
Always humble, approachable and kind, he often said: “I have been incredibly lucky on two counts. I have spent my life doing professionally what I would have gladly done as a hobby, and I have had a wife, Pat, who has always supported me.”
On Watman’s passing, World Athletics President Lord (Sebastian) Coe wrote, “For as long as most of us in athletics can remember, Mel Watman has been a colossal figure both on and off the page. ”
He is survived by Pat, his sister Benita and extended
family.