Roy Williams

Roy Williams

Born:

9 September 1934

Discipline:

Decathlete

Local Club:

Western Suburbs

Roy Williams's Story

Few people have enriched the New Zealand athletics community quite like Roy Williams. 

The younger brother of 1952 Olympic long jump champion Yvette, Roy was also a top international class athlete memorably winning decathlon gold at the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica.

He also set Commonwealth and New Zealand decathlon records and won 14 national titles – 11 in the decathlon, one each in the long jump, discus and 120yd hurdles – during a lengthy and storied career.

Born in Dunedin, Roy largely focused on rugby and cricket as a Dunedin Technical High School student, although he did show athletics potential at an early age winning back-to-back 75yd hurdles titles at the Otago intermediate schools’ championships.

“I did very little competing, however, during my high school years, mainly because we had just one day of athletics a year, our school’s ánnual championships,” he explains. “The facilities would be best described as pathetic. In the high jump, as one example, we had to jump off and land on the grass surface. The top of our hurdles were made of 4in x 2in timber. If you hit one, you risked breaking a leg.”

Roy became interested in pursuing an athletic (track and field) career shortly after Yvette had won gold in the long jump at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.

 “Yvette was my inspiration,” he says. “I thought – if Yvette can do it, maybe I can get at least halfway there.

“I had just turned 18 and while I had been competing in odd events at Otago Centre meetings at Dunedin’s old Caledonian ground, I had trained with Yvette under her coach Jim Bellwood’s guidance for several years.

“Every Sunday during the winter months we would train at St Clair Beach with a large group coached by Mr Bellwood. After completing our warm up we would practice for a couple of hours on the techniques of the various events – sprint starts, hurdles, shot, discus, javelin and high jump. We also learnt long jump’s hitch kick technique jumping off the top of the high sand hills along from St Clair beach.”

After leaving high school and attending Dunedin Teachers’ Training College. Roy tried several different athletics events. He was selected in the Otago team for his first national championships, the New Zealand junior championships at Auckland’s Eden Park. He finished a distant second to Les Mills in the discus but failed to place in his other two events, the 120yd hurdles and javelin.

Next up were the 1954 New Zealand senior athletics championships in Hamilton. “Ï trained my guts out during the 1953 winter to make the Otago team in the 440yd hurdles,” he says.

However, after finishing a distant sixth in the national 440yd hurdles in 59.4s, he ruled out further competing in the event and sought a new event.

“I thought, what else can I do? I’m not fast enough to be a world-class sprinter, I’m not big enough to be a world-class thrower and I have absolutely no natural stamina. Not a lot was left.

“By this time I’d developed a good skillset. I was a better than average high hurdler and discus thrower, so I thought I’d have a crack at the decathlon.” 

In 1954 Roy competed in his first decathlon. He finished second of two competitors at the Otago Decathlon Championship with a modest total of 3908pts (what would be 4763pts on the current decathlon scoring tables).

“Physically I was a late developer,” Roy says. “I weighed just 71kg and was a shade under 6ft at the time of that first decathlon.” 

However, showing a fierce desire to improve, which was the hallmark of his career, he headed north in 1955 to train at New Zealand’s No 1 club at the time, Western Suburbs in Auckland.

Now training with Les Mills, New Zealand javelin champion and record-holder Malcolm Hahn, and Commonwealth long and triple jump medallist Dave Norris proved a huge catalyst for Roy’s personal development.

Training with and learning from each other, he emerged a very different athlete in 1956 winning the first of his 11 national decathlon titles with a New Zealand record of 6036pts. 

Targeting a spot at on the New Zealand team for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics he comfortably met the selection criteria, however he was controversially overlooked for a spot on the team.

“Had I been selected I would have finished no worse than 11th, based on my New Zealand performances early that year,” he explains.

This was to be the first of an unfortunate pattern which was to plague the multi-eventer for the rest of his career, denying him the opportunity to compete on the ultimate stage – the Olympic Games. 

Two years after the Melbourne Olympics, Roy did win New Zealand selection for the first time – for the 1958 British Empire and  Commonwealth Games in Cardiff. As there was no decathlon on the Games programme he was selected for the long and triple jump.

Williams finished a creditable sixth in the long jump but suffering from severe shin soreness, later diagnosed as a stress fracture, he failed to qualify for the final rounds of the triple jump.

From his arrival in Auckland for the next 15 years he diligently trained three hours a day, six days a week, 50 weeks a year at Grey Lynn Park. Training would start religiously at 5pm after Roy had completed an eight-hour working day. “During the spring and summer I would train for three decathlon events each night,” he explains.

In the winter it was mainly running and strength and conditioning work. This included weight lifting sessions with Les Mills (the five time Commonwealth throwing medallist) and New Zealand heavyweight weightlifting champion and record-holder Don Oliver.

In 1960 Roy achieved the decathlon qualification standard set by NZ selectors for the Rome Olympics. But because he received slight wind assistance (above the allowable limit for records) in one of the ten disciplines en route to achieving the qualifying standard, he was controversially not even nominated. Somewhat ironically his points score was passed as a British Empire and Commonwealth record.

With still no decathlon on the Commonwealth Games programme he opted to skip the 1962 Games in Perth, preferring to play basketball for New Zealand on a six-week tour of Australia and South East Asia. Roy was an accomplished basketball player enjoying a five-year international career.

In 1963, Les Mills, who had been studying and competing in the United States, encouraged Roy to join him at the University of Southern California to help develop his athletics career.

Roy took on the adventure and training and competing at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles proved the perfect environment to progress as an athlete. Within six months Roy improved his personal best decathlon score by 600pts. 

“I was no longer competing on New Zealand’s grass tracks,” he says. “And for the first time I was training and competing in the pole vault with a fibre glass pole which made a huge difference. I improved my PB by almost a metre in just four months.”

Again ranked in the top ten in the world he was primed for a strong performance at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics only for the New Zealand selectors to once again inexplicably slam the door shut on his Olympic dreams. 

Roy insists selectors came up with a series of “lame excuses” – one of which questioned his performances in the United States. 

“There seemed to be some doubt over the legitimacy of my performances which was a total nonsense because I’d competed in top decathlon competitions against three world decathlon record-holders, the American duo Russ Hodge and Bill Toomey and C.K.Yang of Taiwan.

 “Even now I am still really bitter at their decisions.”

Yet as crushingly disappointing as it was to miss out on the 1964 Tokyo Games – a couple of positives emerged out of the saga.  

Some seven years earlier, Roy, frustrated that no decathlon on the British Empire and Commonwealth Games programme, put forward a remit at his Western Suburbs Club’s annual meeting that the decathlon be included on the Commonwealth Games programme. The remit was supported and forwarded all the way to the Commonwealth Games Association, who met at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and decided to include the decathlon on the programme for the 1966 Kingston Commonwealth Games.

Also after returning from New Zealand to the United States in late-1964 and having received a lot of sympathy from the public following his non-selection, he was approached by the sports editor of the Auckland Star newspaper and asked if he would like to take up a role covering athletics and the Olympic sports as a sports reporter.  The job sounded appealing and so began Roy’s 40-year career in sports journalism.

He went on to cover four Olympic Games, five Commonwealth Games, All Blacks’ rugby tours and the first Rugby World Cup in New Zealand in 1987 during an esteemed career.

Now juggling training with a journalism career preparing for the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Kingston was far from ideal. Unable to carry out any pole vaulting training was challenging but as the number one ranked decathlete in the Commonwealth he was expected to win. And he had additional motivation to perform.

“I really wanted to win if, for no other reason, than to stick it up the New Zealand selectors. And if I did win, I was tempted to wear my University of Southern California tracksuit rather than my New Zealand tracksuit when I was presented my gold medal on the victory dais. I owed so much to my time in the United States. I would never have been the decathlete I became had it not been for that experience.”

Describing the organisation in Jamaica as “chaotic” – many events faced lengthy delays with the tenth and final decathlon event – the 1500m – starting at seven minutes to midnight.

 On day one he suffered a scare in his second event, the long jump. His first attempt was a narrow no jump. Then, just before his second attempt, a very strong head wind sprung up and he was more than 60cm down on his targeted distance. He recovered, however, with his final attempt to clear a solid 7.26m. At the end of the first day, he led his closest rival, the powerfully built Welshman Clive Longe, by a substantial 227 points. 

On day two, Roy extended his lead over Longe with a fine 45-metre discus throw. But Longe hit back in the javelin reducing the margin to  250pts – which equated in distance to around 150m in the final event, the 1500m, Longe sped off building up a 70-metre lead after the first 400m. Thankfully, the Guyanan-born Welshman did not extend his advantage and Roy hung on for gold by a winning margin of 147pts.  

”It was redemption for me after all that had happened,” explains Roy, who was presented his medal by New Zealander Sir Arthur Porritt, the 1924 Olympic 100m bronze medallist, who also presented Yvette with her Olympic long jump gold medal 14 years earlier. 

In 1967 Roy, at age 33, set his lifetime best of 7438 pts in Los Angeles – a New Zealand decathlon record which would stand for the next 16 years. 

The following year he suffered more Olympic pain in his quest to make the team for the 1968 Mexico City Games. He ripped an adductor muscle competing in the 110m hurdles at the New Zealand Championships in Dunedin in March that year. He was not even nominated by New Zealand selectors for a place on the team despite producing a medical certificate to say he had returned to training and was fully fit to compete.  

Struggling physically and “well past my best” he competed at age 36 at the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.

However, after suffering a severe hamstring tear in the long jump he was forced to abandon his attempt to complete the decathlon.

While Roy’s lengthy international career spanned almost two decades, he continued competing in Masters athletics, winning the pentathlon with a world record score of 4038pts for the 45-49 age division at the 1981 World Veterans’ Championships in Christchurch.

Roy coached a large group of West Auckland athletes for almost 30 years – guiding mainly age-group athletes to a total of 50 national titles and multiple national records.

In 1966 he was named New Zealand Sportsman of the Year – now the Supreme Halberg Award – following his decathlon win at the 1966 Commonwealth Games.

He was awarded a Royal Honour an MNZM (Honourary Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit) for his contribution to athletics and the community. He is a member of the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame and a Life Member of the New Zealand Sports Journalist Association.

His wife of 42 years Ngaire died in 2002. Roy now lives in Te Aroha with his partner Sandra, a fellow former journalist.

Now aged 85, Roy still enjoys an active life. He works out daily and plays croquet three times a week.

 

Written by Steve Landells