Joe Hopkins

Joe Hopkins won the first of three consecutive Lancashire Cup titles over 12 ½ miles in 1920, at the age of 18. In 1926 he won the Lancashire Walking Club’s 52-mile race from Manchester to Blackpool and finished second to W F Baker in that year’s 55-mile walk from Nottingham to Birmingham. It would be ten years, however, before Hopkins rose to national fame when he won the 1936 Manchester to Liverpool walk and finished only 23 seconds behind Harold Whitlock in that year’s RWA 50 km championship. Unlike Whitlock, who later became the Olympic champion, Hopkins failed to reproduce this form in Berlin and did not finish the Olympic race. There were no AAA Championships for long-distance walkers until after the war, but in 1938 Hopkins won the RWA 20 miles at Birmingham, which was effectively the British Championship, and that same year won the the 15-mile Moston Road Walk in Manchester for the third consecutive year. He led all the way to win the 1939 Sunderland to Darlington race, which also had the Northern Counties 50 km title at stake, which Hopkins automatically won.

Personal Bests: 20 mile Walk – 2-49:10.0 (1938); 50kmW – 4-31:01.0 (1936).