Tragedy Ended His Gold Medal Dream (18 June 1976)
I suppose that if I start talking about Constable just now most people will think I am referring to the bicentennial of John Constable, the great English landscape painter.
This year, however, sees an exciting event of a different sort – the Olympic Games in Montreal. And the Constable I am talking about is not John, but Charles George, of Fenny Stratford, the only man from this district ever to compete in an Olympiad.
“Charlie,” as he was known locally, or “George,” as he was known nationally, was the third son of Stephen Constable, who came to Fenny from Kent to be a compositor for the old “Fenny Stratford Flying Post.”
Born in 1904, he attended Bletchley schools, but never shone there as a runner. After leaving school he worked on a farm at Skew Bridge and somehow or another it was then that his interest in running blossomed – maybe he often had to run from Fenny to Skew Bridge to get to work on time. At any rate, it was as a long-distance runner that he made his name.
He began training on the part of Manor Farm then known as Hammond’s Field. He found a good trainer in Tom Brace (Fenny’s last “town constable”) and made rapid progress.
He was not a big man – only about five-foot-seven and slim – but he had a deep and powerful chest which, with his shock of fair hair, was his most notable feature as he galloped round the field.
His first running prize was won at a meeting held on the old sports ground which later became Bletchley Market Field and is now the site of Sainsbury’s store. From then on he won races galore, both on the flat and over steeple-chase courses.
His early performances at county level soon marked him out as an exceptional runner. Eventually he was given a job in London by the chairman of the Surrey AC and thenceforward ran chiefly for that club.
He first caught the national limelight in 1924 when he sauntered away with the South of the Thames cross-country championship. After that he won so many open events over all distances from one to ten miles that no complete record was ever kept.
By 1928 he was rated the best three-miler in the country. But the previous year he had come second in the AAA ten-mile championship and had also acted as pace-maker to Nurmi, the celebrated “flying Finn.”
So it was in the 10,000 metres that he was selected to run for Britain in the IX Olympic Games at Amsterdam. But during the games he developed a septic mouth, could not give of his best, and finished down the field.
His great ambition, however, was to win an Olympic marathon and for the next four years all his training was directed to that end. Then in 1932, the very year when that might have been possible, fate struck. He won the Surrey county cup as usual, but a few days later was taken ill and in less than a month he died of cancer, unmarried and aged only 28.
In 1949 the Bletchley Town and Sports Club began to include athletics in their August Shows. As a result of the efforts of the late Mr Ron Tofield, the events included a three-mile race for the “Constable Memorial Cup.”
The Constable Cup was competed for until the Bletchley August Show ceased. Before his death in a recent year Mr Tofield passed it to the Surrey AC, who had contributed largely to it and who were glad to receive it as a memento of one of their greatest members.
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