Hockey player who won a silver medal at the 1948 Olympics
JOHN PEAKE, the hockey player who has died aged 97, was the last surviving Great Britain medallist from the 1948 Olympic Games in London; he played right wing as his side reached the final at Wembley, where they lost to a brilliant Indian team.
At 23 Peake was the youngest member of a side that also included three teachers, a doctor and two Army instructors. An opening goalless draw against Switzerland was followed by wins against USA and Afghanistan by 11-0 and 8-0 respectively. A 2-0 victory over Pakistan in the semi-finals took them through to a final date with the all-conquering Indians.
Inspired by the mighty Balbir Singh (who would go on to win further gold in the 1952 and 1956 Olympics) India handled the bumpy conditions better, as Peake recalled: “The pitch at Wembley was full of holes. They had been doing the shot put on it. I remember one of the chaps, the centre-half, passed me the ball and I missed it. He was fed up with me – but I will blame the pitch and the shot putters for that.”
Singh scored the first two goals in a 4-0 victory which despite the scoreline was no disgrace: “They were much more adroit than us, tapping the ball to and fro and into the net,” said Peake.
His sporting talents were not restricted to hockey: a reserve for the England squash team, he was widely regarded as one of the fastest movers in the British game, reaching the quarter-finals of the Amateur Championship in 1949. He also played in that year’s Open alongside the professionals, losing to Norman Borrett, the amateur champion, who had been his Olympic hockey captain.
Peake’s tennis was of a similarly high standard; he won the Navy Championships and only narrowly failed to get into Wimbledon via the qualifying tournament – “I lost when I needed one more set to get in.”
He was extremely modest about his sporting achievements: his daughter recalled not knowing that her father had been an Olympian until she was at least nine or 10, only learning of it when her grandmother mentioned it in passing. His medal stayed in a drawer: “I have probably only looked at it three times since 1948,” he said in 2021.
John Morris Peake was born on August 26 1924 in Cambridge to Albert, a surveyor, and Ruth, née Morris. He won a scholarship to Repton School in 1938, then read Mechanical Engineering at Clare College, Cambridge.
On graduating, he joined the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors – earning a diploma in naval architecture at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich – and played hockey for the Navy.
A slipped disc and the demands of work meant that Peake retired from hockey aged only 28. By then he had joined Baker Perkins, designers of foodprocessing equipment, where he rose to managing director and chairman before retiring in 1987.
Aged 87, Peake was one of the torchbearers for the Peterborough leg of the 2012 Olympic torch relay. He donated the torch to his primary school in Cambridge, St Faith’s, thanking the school for nurturing his love of sport. He remained fit and active, completing the Westminster Mile in 2018 aged 93.
In 2021 he was interviewed as Britain’s oldest surviving Olympic medallist, and reflected how times had changed in the world of sport: “It is all a big deal now, isn’t it? People get a lot of money from sport and they get very famous. When I was at the Olympics we were given a tube of hair cream and a pair of Y-fronts.”
John Peake was appointed CBE in 1986 for services to industry. He married, in 1953, Elizabeth, whom he had met at Cambridge, where she also played hockey, tennis and squash for the university. She died in 2018 and he is survived by their daughter and son.