Tommy Green was born on the 30th of March 1894 in Fareham, Hampshire, in England.
He was the son of a policeman, also named Tommy, who was transferred to Eastleigh when Tommy was an infant. Soon after the move Tommy jnr developed rickets.
The symptoms of rickets include bowed legs, stunted growth, bone pain, large forehead, and trouble sleeping. On account of his rickets Tommy was not able to walk until he reached the age of five.
In 1906 Tommy falsified his age in order to join army at the age of 12. He joined the 20th Hussars and served with them for the next four years until he was invalided out when a horse fell on top of him.
He remained a reservist and when the First World War broke out he was recalled and served in France with the 3rd(the Kings Own) Hussars. He took part in the Battle of Mons. He was to be wounded three times during his time France, and in 1917 was so severely gassed that he was sent home to Britain.
When he returned to Eastleigh he worked at the railway works in the Foundry area.
Tommy had always been a keen boxer and despite his late start learning to walk was a keen long distance runner. In 1926 after acting as a guide for a blind competitor during a long distance walking race he was encouraged to take up the sport himself.
He entered and then won his first race in 1926 at the age of 32. Following that success he joined the Belgrave Harriers.
He began to excel in the sport, but these were amateur times. While the railway would give him time off to train and compete, that time was unpaid. Tommy had married his wife Rose when home on leave in 1915 and now had four children to feed and clothe.
The year 1929, was to be his breakout year. He won a number of national competitions and also came second at an international 100 km event in Milan.
In 1930 he set a new world record, as he became Britain’s first national 50 km race-walking champion. He won a number of other events before returning to Milan and capturing his first international title at the international 100 km race in Milan.
In 1932 he made the British Olympic team to compete in Los Angeles. He was away for seven weeks and Rose and the children had to survive on no income. This was the first year that the 50km walk was contested at an Olympic games and finishing seven minutes ahead of the second placed athlete Tommy claimed the gold medal; and of course the Olympic record.
He was 38 years of age when he won his Gold medal and he has remained the oldest Olympic Gold medalist in the 50km walk. His aim was to compete at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, but he finished fourth in the National championships and failed to qualify.
He went on to win over 700 cups in his career. He won races in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, winning the Mussolini medal in 1927 and the Hitler cup in 1933. In his heyday it was said that he would walk at eight miles per hour.
In 1936 he decided to retire from competitive athletics at the age of 42. He was now running a pub, the Meadow Bank Hotel, after losing his thumb in an accident at the Railway works. (The pub was later renamed the Golden Hind but has since been torn down).
There was no worker’s compensation in that era and in order to raise the cash to buy the pub Tommy had to sell all of his trophies. He was later able to buy them back and display them in the hotel.
During the Second World War Tommy was a member of the Home Guard ironically for someone who had won the Hitler Cup he was now defending his hometown from the dictator after whom the trophy was named! On the plus side because of his link with the Los Angeles Olympic games his pub was very popular with the US Servicemen in the area.
He later converted one of the rooms in the pub into a small Gym. It was here that he let another railway works employee train, Middleweight Boxer Vince Hawkins. Tommy backed Hawkins financially as well as acted as his trainer. Hawkins went on to win two Lonsdale belts.
The lure of competition was often too much and Tommy participated in a Victory Walk following the Second World War where, at the age of 53, he finished 17th out of 146 competitors. His final race came in 1946, where he was victorious in an event that stretched from Poole to Wareham in Dorset, a distance of only nine miles!
He died the day before his 81stbirthday in 1975. Appropriately after his death he had a street named after him in Eastleigh, Tommy Green Walk.
For someone who was unable to walk until he was five years old Tommy Green certainly made up for lost time and proved that age is no barrier.
