Sippy -
If you are still around, I would LOVE to share some of my memories of George Hibberd with you.
He was my coach at Cambridge & Coleridge Athletics Club when I was a youngster in the 1980s. A very fine hurdles coach, who produced a string of very talented hurdlers.
A small, wiry man, he lived in Comberton at the time, drove a red Saab, and was always puffing away on his pipe. He started all young athletes in the club on the hurdles. If they didn't take to it he let them drift away to the other coaches in other disciplines, but if they showed a talent for it (and I did) then he kept hold of them. We were all massively devoted to him!
One of my fondest memories of him is standing in the old clubhouse at Milton Road track, looking up at the Achilles board (Achilles is the club for combined Oxford & Cambridge university athletics "blues") listing the Achilles club's Olympic champions, reminiscing about one athlete in particular - Jack Lovelock, who won the 1500 metres at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. With a tear in his eye, George said how he had the most beautiful, fluid running style ever. At the time it stuck me as awesome that he could remember with such clarity a man that he had known and watched run some 40 or more years earlier ... but then again, here am I now, remembering with such clarity a man that I knew getting on for forty years ago ... so what do I know?
Perhaps the best testament to the quality of his technical hurdles coaching was when our family went to Cornwall on holiday in 1982 or 1983 ... I arranged to go to the Duchy of Cornwall athletics track for a couple of training sessions, one of which coincided with their young athletes' club night. I was doing 400 metre hurdles drills of start + first three hurdles, and after I had done three or four starts I became aware that none of THEIR hurdlers were actually training at all ... their coach had them all watching me and was giving them a commentary on my hurdling style and pointing out tips for improving their own.
