NEIL MCKAY spots a piece in Monday’s Telegraph – his mum’s copy, he adds, lest obloquy ensue – about five British Olympians killed before the Great War had barely began.
Four were from the 1912 Games in Stockholm. The fifth was Fred Kitching, a Darlington athlete who contested the standing long jump, one of six jumping events at the London Olympics in 1908. The winner of the improbable event covered 3.33m.
Alfred Kitching who built the Derwent locomotive, and was the grandfather of Fred Kitching
Fred was one of seven grandchildren of Alfred Kitching, the man who founded the Whessoe and in 1845 built the Derwent locomotive, designed by the great Timothy Hackworth and formerly long-familiar on Bank Top station. Though withdrawn in 1869, Derwent had astonished everyone by recording 12mph under its own steam in the Stockton and Darlington centenary procession in 1825. Little, sadly, seems to be recorded of Fred.
The near-omniscient Chris Lloyd, himself perennially one jump ahead, allowed him a passing paragraph in 2008, but only en route to something else. Chris supposed that Kitching was thought to have won silver or bronze, a claim dismissed by the Telegraph as “local folklore.”
Results show him simply to have been unplaced among the 17 competitors.
Subsequently he turned his hand to the javelin, becoming the only Briton of his day to exceed 120ft, 130ft and 140ft, achieving a personal best of 143ft 3ins, 43.6m.
Today’s javelin men manage around 100m.
Reports of his death are also unclear, though he is thought to have fallen towards the end of 1914 at Dunkirk.
The First World War also claimed 34 first class cricketers, 27 England rugby players and hundreds of professional footballers – a loss anticipated in August 1914 by Field Marshal Lord Roberts.
“This is not the time to play games, wholesome as they are in times of piping peace. We are engaged in a life-and-death struggle,” he said.
So it proved, as this week we have been remembering. It would be wonderful to learn more of Fred Kitching.
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