St John’s College Library Newsletter L
LENT 2022
VOLUME 5, ISSUE 2
Johnian Winter Olympians With this year’s Beijing Winter Olympics having recently drawn to a close, we have checked our biographical records for past Johnian involvement in the Games. There has been much talk of the artificial snow at Beijing 2022, but it was used for the first time at Lake Placid 1980. Most Johnian Winter Olympians have preferred ice to snow, despite the fact it is unlikely any of them experienced playing ice hockey on the Cam, as this photograph, probably from the winter of 1947, depicts. The first Winter Olympics were held in 1924, and four years later our first Johnian Winter Olympian competed with the British Ice Hockey team at the 1928 games in St Moritz. Canadianborn William ‘Bill’ Speechly (1927) was netminder for both Cambridge University (two Varsity match victories for the Light Blues against Oxford, one as Captain), and Great Britain (fourth in the Olympics). Rollo Brandt (1955), as well as taking part in the more traditional Johnian sports of rugby and rowing, was a member of the British Bobsleigh team which came 12th in the four-man bob at the Cortina d'Ampezzo Winter Olympics 1956. Another Johnian four-man bobsledder and luger, Norman Barclay (1943), was part of the British team at two Winter Olympics, Innsbruck 1964 and Grenoble 1968. After being injured at Innsbruck, Barclay gave an interview to the BBC from his hospital bed suggesting the only uninjured member of the team should not use his brakes on the Olympic run to win a gold medal for Britain (his comment may have been fuelled by the whisky his friends apparently smuggled into the hospital). The extreme sports enthusiast did the Cresta Run, raced powerboats and cars, became the first person to waterski from Scotland to Ireland, and the first to pilot a hot air balloon over the Alps into Italy during winter.