Gellir lawrlwytho cynnwys at ddefnydd anfasnachol, megis defnydd personol neu ar gyfer adnoddau addysgol.
Ar gyfer defnydd masnachol cysyllwch yn uniongyrchol gyda deilydd yr hawlfraint os gwelwch yn dda.
Read more about the The Creative Archive Licence.

This content isn't available for download, please contact us.

Disgrifiad

Alan Curry
an official’s story

My name is Alan Curry. I was born in London on 4 July 1937, and now I live in Tonna which is two miles the other side of Neath.

My main connection with sport is with the sport of athletics, track and field athletics and cross country running. I’ve been involved in it for over fifty years, I do various things in it but a lot of the time I’m an official, I’m a judge and I’m also the Secretary of West Wales Athletics Council.

I started in Athletics as a runner. When I was about twenty two I started running in cross country races. When I was about thirty three I took an interest in... I used to go to some of the meetings and I started getting involved in judging and I had somebody there to help me along because it’s a long process to get to through the grades.

for the fun of it

I love the sport, I’ve always loved athletics. I like all sports, I watch rugby, I watch cricket but I’ve always loved athletics particularly and you get involved with the athletes and you get to know them and you make a lot of friends in the sport. It’s something I do because I enjoy it, because you don’t get paid for it, you just do it for the fun of it. There’s a lot of pleasure in it, a lot of meeting people. I go all over the country and I’ve been occasionally to other parts of the world as well. I get a great deal out of it.

a bit different

Athletics is a bit different to some sports because if you talk about football you’ve got a referee and a couple of linesmen, and rugby you’ve got a referee and a linesman and perhaps a television judge. In athletics, it’s a lot of different events going on at the same time. You see people doing high jumping and long jumping and throwing the javelin and running, and you have different types of officials. You have officials who are time keepers, that’s what they do, they just take the times of races. You’ve got officials who are starters - they start races. And you’ve got officials who look after the field events - they look after the long jumpers and the shot putters. I’m a track judge - that’s the one I chose. I stand on the finish line and position the athletes in finishing order and sometimes I’m out and around the track watching them, watching that they don’t infringe the rules.

moving up the grades

There’s a grading system in Athletics as there is in every sport, I suppose. You start off in just local meetings under the guidance of an experienced official. You have to pass an exam and then you get reports and you start off at level four, then you get level three and level two and so on and you have to get reports off senior officials, they report on you, they guide you. You sit a number of examinations and you get up through the grades and you have to spend so many years in each grade before you can go on to the next one and when I started out it was taking about six or seven years at least to go from the lowest grade up to the international grade. I got to that in 1980 when I was forty three, and my first major one I did was a meeting at Crystal Palace in London and that was between the United States and Kenya and Britain.
Officials are like athletes. Athletes train hard because they want to get to this championship or that championship. A lot of people will be training and practising now with the 2012 Olympics in mind. Some will make it, some won’t, but the same applies to officials. We have our aspirations and my ambition would be to be an official at the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

all over the place

I’ve been very lucky because I’ve been all over Britain, the major tracks in Britain are Crystal Palace and Birmingham, Sheffield, Gateshead, Manchester. I’ve been to all of those and every track in Wales, obviously, but I’ve also been lucky enough to go to countries abroad. I once went to Iceland, not the shop, the country. I spent five days in Iceland with the Welsh athletics team which was quite an unusual experience because Iceland has six months of darkness and six months of daylight so when we got to Iceland, we arrived one o’clock in the morning and it was as light as this and we were there for five days and it stayed light, an unusual experience. I’ve been to Canada at the Commonwealth Games in 1994, I’ve been to Holland, and I’ve been to various places. My favourite was definitely Canada, a beautiful country.

I judged at the World Cup Final in Crystal Palace and the World Student Games and twice at the Commonwealth Games. I was at the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1986 and again in Canada in a place called Victoria near Vancouver right over on the western side of Canada in 1994. In Edinburgh, there were only four Welsh Officials invited and in Canada only two of us. It’s quite an honour to be selected there. That’s my biggest, the Commonwealth Games.

The most memorable point in my career for me was the Commonwealth Games in Canada in 1994. I’d never been to Canada before so I took the opportunity to see the country and I booked a holiday, a three week holiday going across Canada, from the Eastern side to the Western side and then when I got to the other side I went to the Games which lasted about two weeks. There were some of the best athletes in the world there and the Canadian people were wonderful and the whole atmosphere of the event was brilliant. We were looked after and we were given accommodation and a uniform. You don’t get paid, of course. I had to pay my fare over there but you get accommodation and uniform and all the buses in the city were free. If you had a Games pass, you could go anywhere you liked in the city and it’s a beautiful city and the Games were terrific. The city was beautiful, the people were wonderful so I loved it. That was my high spot in my career.

just get on with it

Sometimes if I’m at a meeting where there’s a huge crowd, twenty / thirty thousand people, you can get a little bit nervous but the worst part I always find is before it starts. You’re waiting for everything. But once you get scoring, it’s just another meeting. One meeting’s like another really, and the nerves disappear, then. I suppose it’s probably the same with athletes and sportsmen. They are probably nervous before a competition and then, once they get out there, they just get on with it.

Judging indoor meetings in Birmingham was difficult because the sixty metre sprint - you can’t be on the finish line because they want you out of the way for television so you’re sitting way back with the spectators trying to judge the sixty metre race and at that level they finish in a line - it’s almost impossible.

a very friendly sport

I’ve come across one or two incidents of not very nice behaviour and I’ve had to tell athletes that’s not acceptable but generally speaking athletes are pretty well-behaved and you don’t get a lot of cheating. It’s not a physical contact sport, I suppose, like playing football and rugby. You make lots of friends, lots of friends. I meet a regular crew. In Wales, it’s the same people almost every meeting. I’ve made hundreds and hundreds of friends through athletics - athletes, officials, all sorts of people, parents. It’s a very friendly sport. That’s one of the reasons I love it.

all weathers

It’s an occupation that takes a lot of time and you have to be prepared to be out in all weathers. I’ve been out in blizzards and thunder storms and snow storms, you name it, pouring torrential rain. You’ve got to enjoy doing it. You’ve got to want to do it. I’ve got all the gear so whatever the weather throws at me I’m prepared for it.

Enjoy it, first of all enjoy it, because it’s a labour of love and get advice from people who have been doing it for a long time and don’t be afraid to ask. The people you work with are there to help, they’re there to see the job is done, and they’ll help you all they can.

I once did a cross country race in Carmarthen when it was blowing an absolute gale, blowing trees over and the conditions there made that very difficult.

giving up ?

I’ve been doing it for about forty odd years and I love it. I’m active, summer and winter practically every week, sometimes two or three times a week, lots of schools meetings, meetings of all levels and I never get tired of it because every meeting is a new experience for me. I was judging just last week in a meeting in Birmingham, indoor meeting. I do indoor meetings, outdoor meetings, cross country, track and field, whatever. I’m very much involved in it and I official almost every week.

Inspiration

It’s like with the Welsh rugby team, it does inspire people. I remember when Lynn Davies won his Gold medal, for instance, everybody wanted to be a long jumper; when Colin Jackson was at his peak, the number of hurdlers in Wales shot up. Success on an international scale does inspire people in any sport, I think.

Interview conducted on 2 March 2010 by Jack Tyrell, Ellie Morris, Morgan Scannell and Brooke Davies, Year 6 pupils from St Thomas Community Primary School in Swansea

Oes gennych chi wybodaeth ychwanegol am yr eitem hon? Gadewch sylwad isod

Sylwadau (0)

Rhaid mewngofnodi i bostio sylw