We have commented on John’s necessity to start with for having approval by his line management in 1986 for time off to do the job of Admin Officer for major Games such as the Atlanta Olympics. He was actually quite fortunate at the time as he explains in the following comment.
… My forte lay as the Team Administrator and in January 1985 I was appointed Admin Officer for the GBR senior track & field team for the following four years taking in to the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988. However for my sins this appointment was subsequently extended twice to take in the Olympic Games of Barcelona and Atlanta. May 1983 I moved from the Regional Council Architect’s office in Dumbarton to Headquarters in Glasgow where I would remain for four years. During this time a major reduction in staffing became necessary with the opportunity to take early retirement on 1st April, 1987. Talk about being in the right place at the right time! During this period at HQ and with the heavy commitments to athletics the Director was very supportive of my involvement at this top level at national & international level and I received considerable additional leave to cover my commitment.”
The amount of additional leave must have been colossal as we will see here. The job of GB Olympic Admin Officer involved time with the team, time at the meeting and lead in international fixtures but involved all the pre-games planning which entailed meeting after meeting, conference after conference and a lot of additional tasks that those not involved were aware of. We will start this look at a typical Olympic Games preparation.
The Games were in August 1996, this meeting about the team management programme was a report bu John and Verona Elder (Women’s team admin officer) was in June, 1994:
The next big meeting was in September/October the same year.
There followed a timetable for the three says and a list of attended representing every one of the sports and their function which covered two sheets of A4. There were other aspects of team and village life that needed attention and there are two that might be illustrated. First we have a self explanatory letter from John.
Then the follow up on official headed note paper:
Then there was the hospitality and cultivation of friends and guests.
Did the Famous Grouse come good?
He did thank them officially in a letter of 26th September. Similar correspondence was carried out prior to both his previous Games with similar positive results.
There were some more matters dealing with fluid intake directly affecting the team though. Atlanta is a very warm, hot maybe more like it, city and more important for the athletes it has a very humid climate. Fluid intake would be high. With an eye on the training camp/holding camp in Tallahasse in 1986, he sent this letter with estimated quantities of fluid in December 1985.
That was all done before the Games year ever started. Bear in mind that most of the officials were also working with international and representative teams too. There was a meeting in April and May 1996 in London to discuss the Tallahassee recce.
It was then all about the holding camp at Tallhassee and there was a meeting on 28th April.
The list of those involved shows, first, the size of the operation which really is a huge task, not something appreciated by all; and second the list of reporters and journalists from Press, radio and television.
We have looked at the reports on the camp already and one of the important but unspoken parts of the job was the making of friends (AKA contacts and allies) while there. We have seen from his dealings with coaches, employers and others that John was a good diplomat – note this follow up from the camp.
All that remained was the information to be passed to those selected to represent Great Britain in the Games.
