Dave Ainsworth  

Apr 122020
 
Dave Ainsworth

Like so many, Dave commenced race walking through his employer, in his case the Royal Air Force which he’d joined in 1965. While training at RAF Hereford (now SAS HQ) 2 were needed for an Inter-Squadron athletics meeting in May 1966. None volunteered, so the Sergeant in charge of the athletics team called out names of the first 2 on his alphabetical roll call, hence ‘A’ was a selection cert. The Sergeant himself was a celebrity – Irishman Jack Murray – as his sister was the late Ruby “Softly Softly” Murray whose name now lives on in cockney rhyming slang. One of Dave’s instructors was then Flight Lieutenant Mike Shannon, a 4-times’ senior Welsh champion in times when it was …Read More