First past the post: the former Olympians who came to Parliament
Sebastian Coe (254) at Summer Olympics in Moscow, 1980. (Horstmüller/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy)
5 min read
Discover the champions in the Chambers as Patrick Kidd hails the former Olympians who have brought their winning spirit to Parliament
It is rare that a cox crosses the finish line before a rower. That is what happened at July’s general election in Colchester, where Labour’s Pam Cox beat James Cracknell, the double Olympic champion oarsman who was standing for the Conservatives. Unlike in Athens 20 years ago, where Cracknell won his second gold by just 0.08sec, the result was not close. Instead of joining a list of some 30 Olympians to have sat in Parliament, Cracknell will head to Paris as a commentator on this summer’s games.
He was not the first rower to paddle in politics. William Waddington, who rowed for Cambridge in the Boat Race, became prime minister of France in 1879. Robert Bourne, a Tory MP who was made deputy speaker in 1931, won an Olympic silver in the eight in 1912, while Colin Moynihan, who twice won election in Lewisham East and was sports minister before taking up his hereditary title, was the cox of the crew who won the same in Moscow in 1980.
Lord Higgins is the oldest surviving Olympian politician. The 96-year-old former MP for Worthing was a 400m runner at the 1952 Games
Some very celebrated Olympians have entered Parliament. Sebastian Coe, winner of two golds in the 1,500m and two silvers in the 800m, was Tory MP for Falmouth and Camborne from 1992 to 1997 and joined the Lords in 2000, from where he ran the 2012 London Olympics. In terms of medals, though, he must defer to two Paralympians: Baroness Grey-Thompson, a crossbench peer, won 11 golds in wheelchair athletics, while Lord Holmes of Richmond, a Conservative peer, won nine golds in swimming, including a record six at a single Paralympics at Barcelona 1992.
The first Olympian in the Commons was John Boland, an Irish Nationalist who represented South Kerry from 1900 to 1918 and picked up two tennis gold medals at the inaugural Games in Athens in 1896, despite having arrived without a racket or kit. John Gretton, Tory MP for Derbyshire South, was the first of seven sitting MPs or peers to go to an Olympics and the only one to win gold. In the sailing regatta in 1900 at Meulan-en-Yvelines, on the Seine north-west of Paris, he won twice on a boat called Scotia.
Eight years later, John Wodehouse won a silver in polo as Liberal MP for Mid Norfolk. Freddie Guest, another Liberal who represented four seats in his Commons career, was secretary of state for air in 1921 to 1922 and won a bronze in the same sport at the 1924 Games in Paris.
Those Olympics were immortalised in the film Chariots of Fire and the character played by Nigel Havers, a hurdler who trains with champagne flutes on the crossbars, was based on David Cecil, future Marquess of Exeter. In 1928, he won the 400m hurdles gold and four years later, when MP for Peterborough, ran in Los Angeles, coming fourth in his own event and winning a relay silver.
John Jacob Astor, owner of The Times from 1922, the year he was elected MP for Dover, had earlier won gold in the doubles and bronze in the singles for rackets at the 1908 games. Curiously, the man who beat him in the semi-finals of the latter was The Times’ sports editor, Evan Baillie Noel.
Several other parliamentarians, sitting or future, competed at those first London games, including William Ward, Liberal MP for Southampton, who took a bronze in sailing; Philip Richardson, future Tory MP for Chertsey, who won silver in shooting; and the dashing duo of the 2nd Duke of Westminster and the 8th Baron Howard de Walden who took part in powerboat racing.
Tanni (now Baroness) Grey-Thompson at the Athens 2004 Paralympic Games
The future 11th Earl of Northesk, 13th Earl of Stair and 1st Lord Brabazon of Tara all went to the 1928 Winter Olympics in St Moritz to compete in sliding sports, though Brabazon, at the time MP for Chatham, broke several ribs in training and couldn’t race. In 1964, the future 3rd Baron Glentoran, then just plain Robin Dixon, won gold as brakeman in the bobsleigh.
Peeresses have a fine Paralympic pedigree. Davina Ingrams, the 18th Baroness Darcy de Knayth, was paralysed in a car accident in 1964, a year after she entered the Lords. In 1968, she won a gold in swimming, then a bronze for table tennis in 1972. Baroness Masham of Ilton, who died last year after 53 years in the Lords, won 10 medals in the same two sports.
Lord Higgins is the oldest surviving Olympian politician. The 96-year-old former MP for Worthing was a 400m runner at the 1952 Games, where Chris Chataway, later a minister under Ted Heath, came fifth at 5,000m. And Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, the former Liberal Democrat leader, ran in the 200m in Tokyo in 1964. He won his heat but missed a place in the semi-final by one tenth of a second. Campbell was later to reflect that, in politics as in sport, winning is not everything.
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