John Hedgethorne C413 of the Essex Police, and the 30th and last to finish was P. Cox also of the Essex Police. 15 became new Centurions, 8 of them from Holland. Several walkers had now adopted the Dutch practice of walking together throughout the race, two of them being local lads Trevor Chorley and Les Gwinnell as well as the 3 Lancashire walkers who finished in equal third place with a sub 20 hour performance to win the ‘Sunday Dispatch’ trophy. At the September meeting, all 20 new Centurions from the two 1969 races were elected to membership. It was also announced that there was a second legacy in excess of £440 from the John Prior estate, to aid the general funds and cover the cost of the 20 new badges which had now risen to £65. These badges would be the last from Messrs Daffern & Co., who had supplied them from the very beginning. The die for our badges was passed on the Messrs Marples and Beasley of Birmingham who confirmed that the die was our property and that they would be please to produce our badges in future. In February 1970, the R.W.A. was asked if they could provide 5 walkers for a 24 hour race at Rouen, France. The R.W.A naturally turned to the Centurions for guidance. Karl Abolins C233, Paddy Dowling C331, John Eddershaw C299, John Hedgethorne C413 and Colin Young C317 were all accepted to represent Great Britain in a match race against the French with Joe Lambert C223 as team manager. Our team, a good mixture of North, South and Midlands walkers, put in some excellent performances for a race held in early May, with each of them well over the hundred. They were only prevented from making a clean sweep of this race by the Frenchman Gaetan Hacquebart in 4th place. This event which nowadays is much more informal, has over the years attracted many British walkers, most of them Centurions. A month after the Rouen race, Colin Young and Paddy Dowling accepted an invitation in
place over the weekend of July 31st – August 1st. The bare figures are that 65 started, 31 finished and 13 became new Centurions (4 of them Dutch). The race itself was unremarkable except for the fact that Karl Abolins C233 won it for the 4th time in succession. The result sheet showed 14 new Centurions, one of them being C453, Trevor Chorley of the Bristol Walking Club. But Trevor Chorley was already a Centurion, having qualified in the 1969 Bristol race to become C435!
the toughest of all events – the 530Km Strasbourg to Paris race. Paddy had to give it his best just before the halfway point, but Colin went all the way to finish an excellent 5th and thus become the first British athlete to complete this gruelling challenge. The biennial Leicester to Skegness race was held in two different months!, the race taking
This is not a mistake, just another of those strange
coincidences. It would appear that Trevor Chorley did not identify himself as a Centurion on his entry form, and nobody else realised that he was a Centurion. At the AGM in September, the new Centurions were elected to membership and their badges were issued, including the Dutch members. It was not until after the meeting that the mistake was noticed, and rather than trying to retrieve the badges and adjust the records, it was decided to leave number 453 out of the numbering.
However the minutes of the meeting, for some strange and as yet
undiscovered reason, told a different story. The new Centurions were listed in the minutes without the name of Trevor Chorley, and numbers 448 to 452 & 454 to 461 were allotted to them. The number 453 was not allocated, the reason given being “The number having been missed in the making of badges”. How a number could have been left out by a new supplier who has just been awarded the contract, or why, if this was a genuine mistake, it could not have been made after the original order (at this time in our history, badges were still be made to specific order) is a mystery. It is clear that this was a deliberate attempt to cover up the embarrassment of a simple clerical error.
It is fair to say that since this unfortunate
occurrence, (Centurions are only human after all, and can make mistakes) the records have been meticulously checked to make sure that such a mistake could not happen again. There have been a few near misses, due mainly to the bad transcription of Dutch names, but so far, never a repeat of this one off error in a very long history. At that same meeting in September,
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