Although born in Scotland, Tom Spence was better known for helping develop the sport of field hockey in Los Angeles more than in Great Britain. As a youngster, he was a distance runner and a keen boxer. During World War I, he was stationed in Gibraltar, where he contracted malaria. As a metallurgist, he worked in India for a few years in the early 1920s, assaying metals in silver mines, but returned to Scotland shorty afterwards, before moving to the United States in 1929. After a spell working for a local company in Los Angeles, Spence worked for the government at the McClellan Air Force Base, helping to develop rocket fuel, among other things. He was kidnapped on one occasion and taken to a mine in Death Valley, but escaped his captors. Spence became a naturalized American in 1937. His only involvement with the 1932 Olympics was as an umpire in just one match and that was, coincidentally, between British India and the USA, two countries that were his home at one time.
Great Britain