How DID Allan Wells become a sprint champion?
I was a sprinter, competing for Great Britain and England at international level from 1959 until 1966, a time when most British athletes were 100 per cent amateur and 100 per cent clean.
Competition took me many times behind the Iron Curtain, and there were rumours East German and Russian athletes took drugs.
what was allan wells doing in athletics from when he was aged 18 to 26 (Mail)? How could anyone win Commonwealth medals without either sprinting experience or extra assistance? so although Mr wells strenuously denies taking drugs, the fact that a BBC documentary is taking a look at those years of his career doesn’t surprise me at all.
He had been a middle-ranking long-jump and triple-jump club performer, and it’s recorded that in those days he was thin. apparently, he subsequently i ncreased in weight until he had gained the frame seen in the sprint events at the Edmonton Commonwealth Games in 1978.
Is it likely that in those days such a body mass could have been achieved in such a short time by normal training methods involving repetitive track work?
Then there’s his coach, wilson Young. He had been a professional sprinter when young and was very successful in such events as the annual Powderhall sprint. although there is no evidence Young did so, many of the competitors there were known to use drugs to assist their performances.
I’m now 75 and the past is in many ways unimportant. But I’m sure my children and grandchildren will one day appreciate that their grandfather loved his sport and was proud to have been an Olympian in the good old days.
DAVID H. JONES, Andratx, Mallorca.
Trouble ahead
aN absolutely brilliant, terrifying but straight to the point article by Chris Deerin (Mail) showed up the sNP and many of their more rabid followers for the power-grabbing party of control that at least 50 per cent of us know them to be.
They’ve taken control of our lives, policy by policy and bit by bit, stolen our national flag and attacked anyone and anything who has stood in their way or who merely disagrees with them. Regardless of what the sNP are offered, it will never be enough, and the brainwashing of the more gullible of the scottish public will continue unrelentingly while they constantly vilify those who disagree, until – by hook or by crook – they gain independence. It is obvious that Nicola sturgeon is a far more competent politician than her more bombastic predecessor and she no doubt ran a first-class election campaign.
she still, however, wants independence first and foremost and unless our countrymen start to challenge what she says and the policies of her party, I see trouble ahead. AllAN MIllEr, Kirkintilloch,
Dunbartonshire
Ultimate irony
THE First Minister solemnly tells us that continuing membership of the European Union is ‘vital’ for scotland. she then gives the reasons why.
These seem to be economic but the irony seems to be lost on her that these are the very reasons for remaining part of another union much closer to home – the UK, a union the party exists to destroy. This is the paradox to end all; the elephant in the room, the absurdity that no amount of obfuscation or rhetoric can disguise.
It is a totally illogical argument and defies reason.
AlExANDEr McKAy, Edinburgh
Blood money
LIKE so many people these days I applied for service details of my grandfather (wounded twice in the Great war) and my great uncle (killed in action at Gallipoli).
I was invited to register and then supply credit card details to pay for access to the records. My family paid for that information in blood!
Those records are ours – they belong to relatives of those who served. we should not have to access to them by payment. How does Ireland manage to place civilian census details and military records online free of charge while we have to pay for them?
NAME AND ADDrESS SupplIED
Building for growth
FIGUREs released as part of the annual Population survey show there were approximately 176,500 people employed in the scottish construction sector l ast year, around 58,500 fewer than in 2008 when industry employment hit a peak of 235,000.
These new figures come hard on the heels of recent figures showing the scottish industry output hit an all-time high of £11.9billion in 2014. as the value of industry output has spiked, it is striking to observe that employment in the sector has failed to keep pace.
as a consequence, every £1million of industry output generated now supports 15 scottish construction jobs, whereas the same output value would have supported 22 jobs back in 2004.
On current levels of industry capacity, these record-breaking ou t put figures are s i mply unsustainable.
It is encouraging that levels of industry employment have finally begun to rise in 2014 following five years of steep decline.
But without suitably balanced growth across all sectors, a decoupling of jobs and output will continue, placing the industry’s longterm recovery at real risk.
The public sector has an important role to play by prioritising procurement and project funding decisions t hat maximise di r ect employment within the industry. VAugHAN HArt, managing director,
Scottish Building Federation
Cliff’s heart of gold
I UsED to be a member of a tennis club used by Cliff Richard. I was never an acquaintance of his, but he had a r eputation among members of being a quiet, modest, unassuming i ndividual, always ready to lend a sympathetic ear. In his years there, I didn’t hear a single word said against him.
we all learn lessons as life goes by, and one of those is that people who have a generous heart are often attacked by those they help. My family has helped those in financial distress, and that help has been returned by theft, spite and vandalism, sometimes costing thousands of pounds.
I’ve noted severe flaws in all these people: drug addiction, incest, prostitution and being physically violent among them. I also saw that these people dealt with their problems by denial, repression or projection.
I can’t with any certainty say whether any of these circumstances apply to sir Cliff, but we should be aware there are people with axes to grind, and the very high esteem in which I hold sir Cliff puts these possibilities high on my list of probabilities.
rOBIN llOyD, Ellesmere, Shropshire.
Pottery lesson
aNYONE who watched t he recent television programme on Victorian working conditions, filmed at Gladstone pottery museum in stoke, will have seen a saggar maker’s bottom knocker in action (Letters).
saggars are the fireclay containers used to protect the delicate wares during the firing process in the kiln.
D. BrOWN, Stoke-on-trent, Staffs.