Dick Taylor

Distance runner Dick Taylor was equally at home running on the track, road or cross-country. A former British record holder at three and six miles, he won the English junior cross-country title in 1965 when he also won the first of two consecutive Midlands three miles titles.

Despite finishing third behind Ron Clarke (Australia) and Henk Altmann (South Africa), Taylor was the 1966 AAAs three miles champion as the leading UK runner. The following year he won the coveted 22km Morpeth to Newcastle race, when he also won the English cross-country title. Taylor was selected for the 5,000 metres at the Mexico Olympics, but was eliminated from a heat that contained Mohamad Gammoudi and Kip Keino, the eventual gold and silver medallists. Taylor could well have missed the Games after being involved in a car accident on his way to the Midlands Championships at Smethwick a few months before going to Mexico.

Taylor won the 1969 AAAs 10,000 metres title ahead of Mike Tagg and Ron Hill. Taylor was second at both that year’s English Cross-Country and International Cross-Country Championships when, at Clydebank, Scotland, he finished runner-up to Belgium’s Olympic steeplechase gold medallist Gaston Roelants and helped England win the team title. Back in Scotland the following year for the Edinburgh British Empire and Commonwealth Games, Taylor won the 10,000 bronze medal after a fantastic finish involving Ron Clarke (silver) and Scotland’s Lachie Stewart (gold).

With no chance of making the München (Munich) Olympics due to a ligament injury, Taylor retired in April 1972. He then became a sales representative, and later sales director, with a Coventry-based firm of commercial stationers and printers. In 1979 he was elected chairman of the local branch of the Institute of Marketing. Taylor’s book “Golds Aren’t Easy” was published in 1975.

Personal Best: 5000 – 13:26.2 (1970).