David WESTERHOUT

David Westerhout was born in England and began his sporting career as an athlete. He headed the UK junior rankings for the javelin in 1954 but competed in the senior ranks mainly over the 400 m hurdles. His best year was 1958 when he chosen to represent England at the Commonwealth Games in Cardiff though he was eliminated in the first round of the competition. Westerhout was ranked just outside the world’s top hundred for the year. He qualified as an optometrist in 1959 and the next year left to pursue his career in Rhodesia. Westerhout then changed sports and took up pistol shooting. He won the World Combat Pistol Championships in 1977 and for that achievement was voted Rhodesia’s Sportsman of the Year. At this time he was serving in the Special Forces Unit of the Rhodesian Army. In 1980 he competed for a newly renamed Zimbabwe in the rapid fire pistol event at the Moscow Olympics. He did not perform well but had the consolation of meeting the woman he was later to marry, a Soviet translator called Tanya. One of Southern Africa’s leading optometrists he has also spent time in the USA as a visiting professor at the University of Houston

Athletics - Personal Best 400yH – 53.9 (1958)