Alan Bunyard PARKER

Had Alan Parker not been on the British running circuit at the same time as Roger Bannister, Chris Chataway, Gordon Pirie and Bill Nankeville, he would surely have left the sport with far more titles.

A former Barrow Grammar School student, he won the 2-mile open handicap event at a meeting in Barrow-in-Furness in 1944. He was just 16-years-of-age at the time, and won from a field of 23 men older than himself. He won the Northern Counties Junior Mile Championship in 1946 and later that year, after going to Liverpool University, took up cross-country running and competed in the UAU (University Athletic Union) Cross-Country Championship. In 1947, he was the surprise winner of the mile race at the UAU Challenge Cup meeting at Motspur Park. Later that year Parker finished second in the County Championships mile race, representing Lancashire.

Parker was one the original of 147 athletes penciled in for the Great Britain squad for the 1948 Olympics and, less than a month before the start of the Games, he was on standby for the 1,500 metres if Doug Wilson failed a fitness test, which he didn’t, and Parker was omitted. After two good seasons in 1951 and 1952, however, he was back in contention for the British Olympic team for Helsinki.

In the 1951 AAA mile, won in record time by Roger Bannister, Parker set the pace for the first three laps. A month later, Parker moved up to three miles and finished third in the British Games at White City, and a further four weeks after that, finished second to Bill Nankeville in The City Mile, in the first British athletics meeting under floodlights, again at the White City.

Parker won the 1952 Lancashire 3-mile title, was third in the County Championship 3-miles behind Gordon Pirie and Frank Sando, and was second to Chris Chataway in the AAA 3-miles. Chataway, Pirie and Parker were all selected for the 5,000 metres at the Helsinki Olympics where Parker finished second in his heat and was the fastest of the three Britons. In the final, however, he was nearly 19 seconds slower and finished 11th.

A Civil Servant, Parker won Civil Service 1- and 5-mile titles on several occasions and in 1953 was back to winning ways on the cross-country circuit, winning the North-Western senior title by more than 80 seconds.

Personal Best: 5000 – 14:18.47 (1952).