Bill Bolt

As a youngster, Bill Bolt was a member of the Northampton Institute gymnastics club in Islington, the area of London where Bolt was born. A pommel horse exponent, he was in the Northampton team that won the Adams Shield as national team champions three times in 1925 and 1927-28. He was selected for the 1924 Paris Olympics but was a non-starter. Four years later Bolt was on the short-list for the Amsterdam Games but never made the final selection.

A surveyor and valuer by profession, Bolt was on the British Amateur Gymnastics Association executive council and in the early-1930s became a gymnastics judge. He was selected to officiate at the Berlin OIympics, along with H. J. Drury, who sadly died three weeks before the start of the Games. Bolt was a pommel horse judge at both the 1952 and 1960 Olympics. Bolt later became chairman of the British Amateur Gymnastics Association and the Clayton Bolt Shield, awarded at the London and Kent Open Gymnastics Championship, was named in his honour.