Over the past 80 years several thousand athletes have graced the cover of AW. Some, such as Usain Bolt, have featured on our front page a number of times. The first athlete to receive the honour as an ‘AW cover star’, though, was the little-known long jumper Jim Morrish.
The Oxford University athletics captain had a best of 7.31m and was pictured in action on the front of our iconic December 1945 issue while jumping at White City.
Born in 1920, he competed for Wolverhampton Grammar School and joined Tipton Harriers in 1938 – winning, among other things, the Midland Counties junior 220 yards title – before going to Oxford University, where he represented the Achilles club. Once there he was invited to train for the 1948 Olympics but turned it down, his family believe, in order to focus on tutoring his young son, David, with maths.
“He was a versatile athlete,” says Tipton Harriers historian Chris Holloway, “often covering track and field events in inter-club trophy meetings that were popular at the time before leagues. He gained Staffordshire colours before the war and it would appear he went to Oxford sometime in late 1939 were he won two events in the Freshman’s Sports in high jump and long jump.”
Holloway adds: “His university career was impressive and he beat CB Fry’s long jump record that had stood since around 1893!”
It seems Morrish put academics before athletics as he left Oxford with a double first in Maths and also Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Later he enjoyed success in the emerging world of rubber and plastics, winning a prize for innovation industry which was to be presented to him in Australia in 1967.
Sadly he died from a heart attack just before he was due to make the trip, though, with his wife, Joyce, still in her 40s and his two daughters, Elizabeth and Rosemary, still at school.
Rosemary says: “As the issue [in December 1945] suggests, my father was a leading UK long jumper immediately after the war. He came second in the July 1946 AAA championships with a leap of 6.96 metres.”
There is no doubt Morrish’s career was interrupted by World War II as well, with him serving in the RAF as a pilot officer.
After hanging up his long jump spikes he became a leading golfer with Harpenden Golf Club and he was a fine piano player and a keen oil painter. “My father was exceptionally talented in many ways,” says Rosemary.
She adds: “Today’s athletes are the same as those in the 1940s – they not only enjoy the competitive nature of athletics events and the pushing of one’s performance to PBs but also they develop and are enriched by these close and lifelong friendships made at the time.”
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