| Medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Competitor for Great Britain | ||
| Track cycling | ||
| Olympic Games | ||
| Bronze | 1948 London | 1km time trial |
| Bronze | 1948 London | Team pursuit |
Thomas "Tommy" Charles Godwin (born 5 November 1920)[1][2] is a former British track cyclist active during the 1940s and 1950s. He held national records and raced abroad. He later became a coach, manager and administrator.
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Godwin was born in Connecticut, United States. His first bicycle was a Wrenson's delivery bike which he used to run errands for a local grocer.[3] He became interested in cycling because of the Olympic Games in 1936.[4] Arie van Vliet's riding in the 1,000-metre time-trial inspired him. Godwin began racing three years later and rode the fastest 1,000m of the season at the Alexander Sports Ground. He was invited to trials in the Midlands to find riders for the next Olympics, despite not yet having won a race.[5]
He won a 1,000m at The Butts track in Coventry on 29 July 1939. His chances of Olympic selection ended with the second world war. He envied Reg Harris and Dave Ricketts for being selected for the world championship at a young age, "not that I had any claims to such honours but because their good fortune provided them with expert tuition and decent tracks for training. In the Midlands this all seemed so far away."
Godwin was an apprentice electrician in a reserved occupation during the war,[6] working for BSA. But there was little competitive cycling and he rode at only 13 meetings between 1940 and the end of 1942.
The change in war fortunes meant more sport in Britain from 1943. Godwin was unbeaten in five-mile scratch events and won the Cattlow Trophy at Fallowfield, Manchester, that year and in 1944. In the national championship of 1944, at which Harris made his breakthrough, Godwin won the five-mile. He repeated this success in 1945, adding the 25-mile title which he retained in 1946. In 1949 he won the 4000 metres event.[7] He won the BSA Gold Column, offered by his employers, by winning the five-mile at Herne Hill in south London in 1945.
The win at Herne Hill, the first time he had ridden there, "must have impressed, for an invitation to ride in Paris came my way," he said in the British weekly, The Bicycle. "Being the first international test after cessation of hostilities it was indeed a great honour."[8]
Godwin won two bronze medals, in the team pursuit with Robert Geldard, Dave Ricketts and Wilfrid Waters, and the 1,000m time trial at the 1948 Summer Olympic Games in London. He came third in the 1,000m at the 1950 British Empire Games.
Godwin managed the British cycling team at the 1964 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, became president of the British Cycling Federation and of the Solihull Cycling Club. He ran the first British training camp in Majorca, Spain,[9] and the first track course at Lilleshall, and founded the Birmingham RCC.[10] He was Britain's first paid national coach[11] and trained a generation of British track riders, many of whom won national and international titles and medals. They included Graham Webb, who beat the British hour record and won the world road race championship, and Mick Bennett, who won bronze medals at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics.[12]
From 1936 to 1950, he worked for BSA. For 36 years from 1950 he ran a cycle shop in Silver Street in the Kings Heath district of Birmingham.[13] His autobiography It Wasn't That Easy: The Tommy Godwin Story was published in 2007 by John Pinkerton Memorial Publishing Fund.[14]
He is president of Solihull Cycling Club. His wife, Eileen, died on 5 January 2011.[15]
Godwin is an ambassador for the Olympic Games in London in 2012. On 27 July 2010 he appeared on the BBC One TV programme "London 2012: Two Years to Go", praising the new velodrome taking shape. He was interviewed by BBC presenter Sophie Raworth and showed his two Olympic bronze medals.