With the experienced Stewart Morris as helmsman and David Bond as crew, Britain’s entry Swift won the Swallow class event on the only occasion it was included in the Olympic yachting program. Their partnership was formed only a few months before the Games began when Morris and his usual crewman parted company after a disagreement and ended with the end of the 1948 Games. As a crewman Bond’s name was usually omitted from newspaper reports and many of his colleagues at BOAC were not aware of his success until he produced his medal on his return to work.
Bond himself was educated at Harrow and served as an aircraftsman in the RAF in the war, after which he worked for the British Aircraft Corporation. After an unsuccessful period as a market gardener he later became a successful yacht builder in Cornwall.
Bond was the only British Olympic champion from the 1948 Games still alive when the Olympic Games returned to the British capital in 2012 and belatedly received some of the publicity of which he had been denied in 1948.
Great Britain