Paul Nihill was the first British male track and field athlete to
compete in four Olympic Games. 1964, 1968, 1972 & 1976 (aged 37).
He set a world 20km record of 84:50 in 1972 on the Isle of Man
and won multiple British titles.
He is pictured above at the Leicester Sports centre during a road race
that also featured Ken Matthews (1968 Olympic Gold medal 50k race walk).
Between 1967 and 1970, Nihill won 85 of his 86 walking races, his only defeat coming
in the Olympic 50km at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, when in the thin air of the high
altitude he pushed himself to a standstill, collapsing within four miles of the finish.
Nihill was born days after the start of the Second World War and spent time in an orphanage
at a young age.
After serving in the army in the 1950s, Nihill started race walking to help
improve his mental health.
"My great reward in athletics was not financial, but it was seeing
the world," Nihill once said, according to Athletics Weekly.
"Up to the age of 23 I'd never
been abroad but I went to the Olympics in Tokyo and then Mexico and many other places,
which was fantastic.
"Back then we used to sit at the same table in a canteen eating meals
in an Olympic Village with some of the superstars of world sport too, they were innocent days."
Nihill also recalled taking a bicycle at the Tokyo Olympics, provided by organisers of the
Games, and riding away from heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier, who claimed
that it was his. He shouted ‘hey, that’s mine!’ And I probably cycled off at 100mph.
They were great days!”
He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1976 for services to sport.
Paul Nihill died at the Maritime Medway Hospital, Gillingham, Kent on
15th. December 2020 after contracting Covid-19. Aged 81. He had been suffering from dementia
and lived in a nursing home.