Alfred Wilkins
Passion for running inspired influential and successful athletics coach
STANDING ON bleak Sunday mornings at West London Stadium with stopwatch in hand, Alf Wilkins personified the selflessness of the dedicated athletics coach. He was the most influential and successful Jewish athletics coach in the United Kingdom for a period of three decades. Over this time he assisted many Jewish athletes in attaining county, regional, national and international titles.
Born in Stepney, Alf Wilkins, who has died aged 92, was educated at the Raines Foundation School in Bethnal Green. Encouraged by his parents, Barnett and Fanny Wilkins, he joined the Oxford and St George’s Club. There he discovered his interest in running. Along with his friend Harry Kane (a future Olympian, Maccabiah and Commonwealth Games medalist), he organised a road-running group as part of the sports curriculum for which the club was known. From there the path to formal association with athletics was short. Wilkins coached a group of athletes associated with the East End-based Grafton Athletics Club in the late 1950s and became a senior coach with the Athletics Association of England in 1959.
Off the running track, Alf Wilkins qualified as a chartered accountant. While running was his passion he never neglected the importance of cultivating a career away from the track, and imbued this philosophy among his athletes. He was equally interested in their professional successes and family lives as he was in their personal best times and positions in races. This probably explains why his close friendships with his athletes continued way after their track careers had finished.
Wilkins was not only a successful athletics coach but also a pioneering institution-builder in the world of UK athletics. He was the founding chairman of the NUTS (National Union of Track Statisticians) in 1958. This organisation systematised the timing of races, the publication of results and introduced national athletics rankings. Prior to its inception, results were only recorded for the first three in each event. This sounds unfathomable today when mass marathons record individual times for tens of thousands of competitors.
The inaugural meeting of the NUTS took place in Wilkins’ office and he served as chairman of the NUTS from 1958 to 1960 and then as treasurer from 1960 to 1969.
He was also a founder member of the British Milers Club in 1963. With British middle-distance running in the doldrums in the early 1960s, this organisation was dedicated to raising the standard of UK milers.
Twenty years later its mission was realised. The trio of Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram reinstated British supremacy in this prestigious event, bringing a slew of Olympic gold medals and world records.
The 1960s also saw many of Wilkins’ protégés rise to national prominence. In 1969 he helped Ray Roseman to become the first Jewish sub-four-minute miler. A year later another member of the Wilkins stable, Len Walters, won a Commonwealth Games bronze medal as a member of the UK 4x400m relay team.
Over the decade of the 1960s Wilkins was also the athletics coach and/or team manager for the highly successful UK Athletics team at three consecutive Maccabiah Games. This resulted in Roseman and another Wilkins mentee, Allan Cowen, gaining gold medals in events ranging from 800m through to 5000m. Over this period, Wilkins also served as the athletics correspondent for the Jewish Chronicle.
By the early 1970s Wilkins first wave of coaching had essentially run its course and most of his athletes had become inactive.
However in the second half of the decade a new group began to form comprised mainly of north-west London Jewish athletes associated with Shaftesbury Harriers. Under Wilkins’ guidance many of this group rose to national middle-distance prominence and in many respects emulated the feats of the Wilkins athletes of the previous decade. Among them, James Espir consistently represented the UK in the early 1980s, and along with his training partner, Jeff Kaye, succeeded in capturing most of the gold medals for the middle distances at both the 1981 and 1985 Maccabiah Games. The latter event also saw Alf Wilkins return to Israel yet again as UK athletics team manager.
In 1998, and by now in active retirement from athletics, Wilkins married Paula French. They enjoyed a further quarter of a century of partnership.
As an avid traveller, Wilkins attended most Olympic Games and European Athletics Championships over a period of more than 50 years starting from the 1950s.
He was also an equally avid supporter of West Ham United. His enthusiasm for sharing the Hammers’ exploits was seconded only by unbounded passion for athletics.
As coach to two generations of UK athletes, his unassuming manner and enthusiasm were contagious.
He served as the gel that brought together motivated individuals from diverse backgrounds and created a competitive yet fun-filled dedication to excellence.
Alf Wilkins is survived by his wife Paula, his stepdaughter Lee French, his stepson Vincent French and his sister Pauline Shomer, who has lived in Israel since 1957.
Alfred Percy Wilkins: born 20 September, 1931. Died 29 February, 2024