Daley Thompson, need we say more?
Alex Stepney, Man U goalie, first match I went to see as a nipper was his testamonial, cemented him in my memory.
Sammy Mcilroy
Barry Sheen
James Hunt
Seb Coe
Roger Black
Alf Tupper 😉
Peter Lorimer
Steve Coppell
Jo Jordan
Lou Macari
Pat Jennings
Kevin Keegan
Barry Sheene
James Hunt
Ian Botham
Daley Thompson
Coe and Ovett
Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks and the Dynamite Kid.
Supersub
Ali
Brian Jacks,
Neil Adams.
Actually got on the Mat with both of them at training events and was very impressed.
Seb Coe
Malcolm Macdonald
Jimmy Connors
Greg Norman
Only ever one. Jim Clark. I never had another hero after he died.
Nigel Spink. I was a goalkeeper and he was the keeper at Villa at the time.
David Platt and Tony Daley.
Jason McRoy as I got into bikes.
Lance. Although I was less a kid, more an adolescent at that time.
Carl Lewis.
Greg Lemond, Robert Millar, abdoujaparov, boardman and obree, that's about it really, I never really went for heroes per se and cycling was the only sport that grabbed me
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Sebastian Coe and Tom Mckean
Jet from gladiators
Wolf from Gladiators.
Hang on a minute...
Gavin Hastings- a fine player and generally good guy.
Caroline Bradley
Barry John. He's a distant cousin.
Redgrave, Coe and Ovett.
Barry Sheene, Evel Knievel but he's not really a sportsman and Nigel Benn.
Daley Thompson And Ali of course.
PS I'm there love child
Derek Redmond, John Regis, Kriss Akabusi & Roger Black.
Rob Hooper
Heikki Mikkola
Dave Thorpe
John Reynolds
Neil Hudson
Sheene
Jim Clark
Indurain
Steve Davis
Foggy
Tomac
Mick Doohan
Bill Beaumont
Barry Sheene
Daley Thompson
Steve Ovett
Steve Ovett
One of the greatest athletes ever. If you dont believe me watch this. If your attention span is too short skip 2 3 mins in.
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World cup[/url]
His nemesis Coe called it the greatest race he has ever seen. Hairs on the back of my neck still go up! These were the days when the greatest raced each other. The then world record holder Walker stepped off the track with 150m to go and later said he had never seen acceleration like it, at that point he knew his time was up. It was the beginning of British dominance of middle distance running for years.
- Barry Sheene here as well
- Daley again
- Seb Coe (In my defence, I didn't know how he would turn out) & Steve Ovett
- Niki Lauda
- Alan Wells (yet again...)
- Gary Lineker, Terry Butcher and Peter Beardsley
- Ari Vattinan
Probably a few more, but I'm knackered and can't see clearly enough to type well!
lunge - Member
Nigel Spink. I was a goalkeeper and he was the keeper at Villa at the time.
David Platt and Tony Daley.
North Birmingham lad?
Wolf shopped in our local Tescos (New Oscott). I also met a few of the Gladiators at the time. Was a bit of a waste as I wasn't a fan of the show - but my gf of the time was a cousins of one of the female ones.
King Kenny Dalglsish , Alan Hansen & Sir Ian Botham .
Kenny opened a co-op in my hometown when I was about 10 ,I nearly wet myself when I saw him.
My dad took me to Anfield,just to see it, and we met Alan in the car park ,he chatted and signed autographs .
Sir Ian reopened the local cricket club after 2009 floods, I went home just to see him..ha.
Lester Piggott. Rode his first winner at the age of 12. Won the Derby at 18. Then aged 54 he came out of retirement and within 10 days won the richest mile race in the world with a breath taking display of timing.
As a teenager when I first got into Whitewater kayaking, Shaun Baker. Particularly liked ID 1 and 2 videos. Then I realised that I'd probably die trying most of it (as he nearly did in Iceland).
Did manage to replicate one scene from the movies though. Still one of my kayaking highlights.
Ken Dryden, the goalie for the Montreal Canadiens, and the goalie for the Canadian national team that beat the Soviets in 1972.
A very intelligent man, who finished his law degree at McGill University (Canada's Oxford or Cambridge) while playing professionally.
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Kevin Keegan. I got my mum to sew a number 7 on the back of my football shirt.
Also Barry Sheene, cigarette card clothes-pegged in place for that authentic two stroke sound from the spokes.
Bob Haro
Eddie Fiola
And most of all Robert Millar, got me on a road bike.
Daley Thompson
Barry McGuigan
Zola Budd
Good call AA. Grew up a few hundred yards from Aintree racecourse (I was more interested in running around it) and my dad was a professional bookie, He met Lester many times. I dont think he was the cheeriest of characters but a fantastic jockey.
never really liked Senna, something about him just struck me as weird, couldn't put my finger on it, but same with Schumacher. You could admire them for their achievements but it seemed too easy. I'm sure they were lovely blokes, but... Prefered the suffering of Prost and Nikki Lauda.
It always seemed more personal to Ovett rather than Coe.
Was amazed by Alan Wells, but then you reflect on all those East Germans being on the juice, and along comes this guy from Scotland....hmmmm. I'm getting too cynical for heroes in Athletics
Seb Coe then when I started mtb John Tomac. So stylish but more influential were the guys marketing him in the background
Pretty much the same as YoKaiser
Bob Haro being the no 1, but any of the old school bmx team.
Got to meet most of them at a kellogs bmx tour when I was about 14.
My Dad was a Wolves season ticket holder during the seventies and I got to go to quite a few games so naturally my first sporting heroes were Derek Doogan and John Richards and a little later, Andy Gray. I rode BMX in the early 80's so Haro and Fiola adorned my bedroom wall as an early teenager followed by The Bones Brigade when I started skating. Although I would never admit it to my Dad, I admired the Liverpool team of that era and was thrilled when Emlyn Hughes signed for Wolves.
Bjorn Dunkerbeck
Laird Hamilton
Daley Thompson
Keep your Mansells and Sennas...
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John Cleland always seemed like his natural place in life was being assistant manager of a branch of Clydesdale Bank or something, rather than trying to kill people with a Vauxhall Cavalier. Glory days
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Linda Lusardi
Jo Guest if feeling indifferent
Paul Elvestrom, 4x gold Olympian.
As a quirk, I did a short presentation on him in 1989 at a race training camp - with the only person to have surpassed him now, Ben Ainslie.
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And Dennis Conner - he re-wrote the rules (literally).
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Clarke.
Campbell.
Garlits.
Davie Cooper
Sugar Ray Leonard
Jock Taylor
Rob Herring
Jean-Michel Bayle
Daley Thompson and Brian Hooper.
Hooper did a motivational talk for the gym chain I worked with. He was great. I was 30 at the time, and the only guy who knew who he was....