John Bailey: 1929-2024

England Athletics is sorry to hear of the passing of John Bailey who coached athletics for 60 years and was a renowned England and Great Britain sprints coach, with a particular involvement with British Blind Sport and Metro Blind Sport (alongside John Anderson, Brian Scobie and Sheila Carey), and the Leicester Disability Athletics Group.

John qualified in 1956 as a senior coach and was in fact tested by former international athlete and National Coach Denis Watts.

He was coach to numerous internationals, including 400m runner and double Olympian Jan Roscoe - who also represented England at the Commonwealth Games twice and won a gold in the relay - and thrower and performance coach Glenys Morton. He later helped Glenys Morton coach her large group of athletes. He also shared his knowledge as an IAAF (now World Athletics) tutor and as a coach / tutor for the Saudi Special Needs Association. 

Ian Thompson and Tanni Grey-Thompson paid tribute to John:

"It was so sad to hear of John’s passing. He gave his all to everything that he did and was a great leader in the development of disability athletics, as well as mainstream athletics. He will be greatly missed."

David Hislop first met John at a Scottish Athletics coaching weekend at Meadowbank in 1974 when he was one of the tutors for David's British Athletics Senior Coaching qualification course. They stayed in touch with their mutual commitment to British Blind Sport ina the 1980s and 1990s.

"John was a coaching legend who made an impact at all levels and never lost his enthusiasm for the sport. - a great character and a great man."

John gave fellow coach Job King his spikes some years ago and told him the following anecdote:

"I think my first spikes were Kingswell, probably sometime in 1949, when I was doing my National Service; I was stationed at Lydd in Kent and was the camp sprint champion and we attended some AAA Meetings in that County.  They were rather heavy so I bought a pair of Fosters, possibly in 1951.  When those had worn out - the spikes were of course not renewable - I traced around my foot and indicated the height of my foot somewhere about the level of my instep and purchased a pair of G T Laws spikes, which I still have in very good condition.  That was probably in 1955."