Primary Assembly: Ever younger

Assembly Plan

Assembly Title: Ever younger

Diving champion Tom Daley's success in being selected for the Beijing Olympics is a magnificent achievement. When Tom was hailed by the press as Britain's youngest-ever male Olympian, however, sixty-year-old Ken Lester was first puzzled and then faced with a difficult decision.

Resources

Picture of Tom Daley. (Searching on keywords 'Tom Daley diver' in Google Images will produce a good choice.)

Introduction

Diving − ten-metre platform and three-metre springboard − is one of the events where we all hope that we'll do well in the Beijing Olympics. That's because of a young man called Tom Daley.

Tom was born in 1994. He started diving when he was eight, and when he was ten he was already winning lots of competitions – at that age he was British under-18 champion. At thirteen he started to win adult championships.

When he was still very young he was spotted as an Olympic hopeful and given a Talented Athlete Scholarship that provides him with coaching and advice. In 2007 he won the Young Personality section of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Tom learned to swim when he was three, but he started to dive because it was more exciting. He says, 'It's a bit more interesting than swimming because you can do flips and dive into the water and put more complications in it than in swimming.'

Tom's extremely talented and hard working − a fine example of how to make the best of yourself through concentration, effort and dedication. And, of course, he's quite young to be competing at the top level, and that attracts the attention of the media. When he competes in Beijing he'll be fourteen and a bit, and so the media have all been saying that he's Britain's youngest ever male Olympic competitor. But is he really?

Ken's dilemma

At his home in Wallingford near Oxford, a businessmen called Ken Lester read all about Tom Daley in the paper. He was very interested. For one thing, Ken was an Olympian himself. In the Rome Olympics, in 1960, Ken was the cox who steered one of the British boats – the coxed pair − in the rowing events.

Now the cox in a racing boat is important − steering a good course and encouraging the crew. But the cox isn't adding to the power of the boat, and so it's best if he or she is as light as possible. Ken Lester was certainly light. And, at the time of the Rome Olympics, he was only thirteen-and-a-half years old.

So what was all this about Tom Daley being the youngest ever male Olympian?

'Hang on!' said Ken Lester to himself (something like that, anyway). 'I'm the holder of that particular record.'

So who had made the mistake? Well, it wasn't the newspapers, for once − although they do make mistakes occasionally. The journalists had done exactly the right thing. The British Olympic Association had said that Tom was the youngest, and they ought to know because they have the details of every British Olympian going back to the beginning of the modern Games.

So it was their mistake. What they'd done was write down Ken's date of birth as 1937 instead of 1947. So it looked as if he was twenty-three in the Rome Olympics and not thirteen.

The British Olympic Association soon put the matter right and confirmed that Ken Lester was really the youngest male competitor.

Ken has happy memories of the Rome Olympics. He says:
'The Great Britain team were a very friendly bunch and I was never made to feel out of things just because of my age.'

Conclusion

Ken felt quite bad about having to tell the British Olympic Association they were wrong. Can you say why?

Yes, because he admires Tom Daley, and didn't really want to spoil things for him in anyway.

So should he have kept quiet about everything and allowed Tom to go on being the youngest? What do you think?

I don't think so. For one thing Tom would have been really annoyed if he'd ever found out that he was involved in something false or untrue − and he would surely have found out eventually. And Ken is right to be proud of his record and what it stands for. It's not surprising he wants to hang on to it.

So Ken's handled it very well. He claimed his record back, but at the same time paid a warm tribute to Tom Daley, wishing him every success.

Meanwhile, Tom could still claim a record for his age. Ken's boat didn't win any medals in Rome, so, if Tom wins one he will be Britain's youngest Olympic medal winner, beating Brian Phelps who won a diving Bronze in Rome when he was sixteen.

But have you noticed something? All the way through − and in the newspapers − the phrase being used is 'Britain's youngest male Olympic competitor.'

Did you notice one little word there? Girls did you notice?

Yes, 'male competitor'. So what about the youngest female competitor?

Well, surprise surprise, the youngest ever British female Olympic competitor is also the youngest competitor of all, of either sex, and it's Margery Hinton, one of our greatest ever female swimmers. Margery swam in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics when she was thirteen and forty-three days, a few weeks younger than Ken Lester. She went on to swim in two more Olympics − Los Angeles in 1932 and Berlin in 1936.

But wait. We haven't finished yet. All we've said so far refers to the Summer Olympics. If we include the Winter Olympics we then find Cecilia Colledge, who really is the youngest British Olympian of all, ever. Cecilia was eleven years and seventy-three days old when she skated in the 1932 Olympic Winter Games at Lake Placid in the USA. So it looks to me as if all this talk about the youngest male competitor starts to be overshadowed by the exploits of the girls.

Just one more thing. As of today, Cecilia Colledge is still with us. You don't mention a lady's age, so work it out for yourself − she was born in November 1920. She had a long and illustrious career in skating. Her life story is wonderful, and we leave it to you to use your research skills and find out more about her. Look particularly for some pictures because she was a beautiful sight on the ice.

Prayer

Lord, give us the strength always to do what is right. Give us the determination to make the very best of ourselves. Give us the resilience to carry on trying when things go wrong. Give us the generosity to give credit to others whenever we can.

Reflection

Sport is about honesty and fairness. Without them, it stops being sport in any true sense.

What do you know about Olympic diving?

There are basically two events − diving from the ten-metre high platform and from the three-metre high springboard. Ten metres is pretty high up, and so the diver has time to do some tricky moves on the way down, and then hit the water doing about thirty-five miles per hour. The springboard is lower, but the jump and spring makes the diver look good, and it's difficult to get it exactly right.

Each of these is divided up into male and female events and there are also synchronised events (for two divers together) for male and female for each board. So, when you add it up there are eight diving events altogether. Each dive is marked by judges − for difficult moves done well and for a clean entry into the water.

What can you find out about skating star Cecilia Colledge? There are some good pictures of her on the web − just put her name into Google Images.

This e-bulletin issue was first published in February 2008

About the author: Gerald Haigh