Mike Ralph

Despite his parents being Welsh, Mike Ralph was a Yorkshireman born in Leeds, where his father worked as a schoolteacher. Ralph´s father was a 1930s Welsh Rugby Union international who later played Rugby League for Batley and Leeds. The young Ralph opted for the round-ball version of football and, as a boy, dreamt of playing for Leeds United FC.

Mike was educated at Tadcaster Grammar School, and after two years National Service in The Army went to St. Edmund Hall, Oxford to study geography. Ralph then did a post-graduate course in physical education at Carnegie College, Leeds. Ralph was selected for the triple jump at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games but failed to make the final. In his first year at Oxford, Ralph became an athletics Blue. He had his sights set on the 1960 Rome Olympics, but a bout of glandular fever ended that ambition.

The Northern Counties triple jump champion in 1961, Ralph also played football at university and gave up a chance of going to the 1962 Commonwealth Games after becoming a dual Blue in 1962 when he was appointed football captain for the 1962/63 season. A right-winger, he played for Pegasus (the combined Oxford/Cambridge University team) before signing for Wycombe Wanderers. He later played for the Somerset club Frome Town.

Despite playing football, Ralph continued his athletics career and in 1963 was the British Universities´ long jump and triple jump champion. Although he never won an outdoor AAA title, he enjoyed four podium finishes in 1959 and 1962-64. Ralph´s third place in 1962 and second place in 1963, however, secured him the AAA title on both occasions as the highest placed British competitor. Ralph also won the indoor AAA triple jump title in 1966.

Ralph went to the 1962 European Championships in Beograd (Belgrade) and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics but missed out on qualification for the final jump off on both occasions. A keen squash player, Ralph was appointed the director of physical education at Warwick University in 1974, and in 1978 was favourite to become the first full-time secretary of the British Amateur Athletic Board. The post, however, went to David Shaw.

Personal Best: TJ – 15.97 (1964).