Two-time Olympian and former world sprint relay record-holder passes away aged 87

Ron Jones, captain of the British athletics team at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, multiple Welsh sprints champion and joint holder of the 4×110 yards world record in 1963, has died aged 87.

Outside athletics he became chief executive of Queens Park Rangers in 1976 and managing director of Cardiff and Portsmouth football clubs.

He will be best remembered, however, as being part of a British relay team who equalled the world 4×110 yards record of 40.0 to beat an American quartet anchored by Bob ‘the bullet’ Hayes 59 years ago.

The scene was a GB versus USA match at the White City on August 5, 1963. It was, AW’s Mel Watman reported at the time, “a date to treasure” and a meeting “that will go down in history as one of the most outstanding international matches ever in terms of records”.

Jones was at centre stage along with two team-mates with the same surname – David Jones and Berwyn Jones – plus Peter Radford as they teamed up to become the first team to defeat an American sprint relay quartet for many years.

Earlier at the same meeting, Ron Jones finished runner-up to Hayes in the 100 yards. The American would go on to win the Olympic 100m title 12 months later in Tokyo whereas Jones was considered to be not only the best in Britain at the time but the No.1 in Europe.

He proved it too as he clocked 9.6 to finish less than a yard behind Hayes, who ran 9.5 on a rain-sodden track. During that same 1963 season Jones also clocked a Welsh 100m record of 10.30 which was so good it survived 27 years before Colin Jackson eventually took it down.

In the relay, Radford led the British team off and handed to Ron Jones, who passed the baton to Dave Jones on the bend and then Berwyn Jones on the anchor, as the team held off the fast-finishing Americans who had Hayes on the final leg.

Born in Cwmaman near Aberdare on August 19, 1934, Ron Jones was a late starter in athletics but eventually began competing for Cardiff’s Birchgrove Harriers. He took the first of his 12 Welsh sprint titles in 1956 and his last one in 1970, whereas outside Wales he captured the AAA 100m crown in 1969 aged 34.

As for international championships, he competed in two Olympic Games, four Commonwealth Games and three European Championships.

In the above image, taken before the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, the athletes are (left to right) Pat Jones, Alan Pascoe, Mary Rand, Ron Jones, Ian McCafferty, Lynn Davies, Andy Todd, Lillian Board and team manager Cecil Dole.

Jones was awarded the MBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours for services to sport and charity and was inducted into the Welsh Athletics hall of fame in 2009.