Spurs and the Olympics - part 3

Before the 2016 games we featured a two part look at Spurs and the Olympics. Now in a third brief episode we reveal a few more links that have come to light from across the years including a certain Mauricio Pochettino and another White Hart Lane link from the only sporting event that can compare with the World Cup.
As well as a look back at the Tottenham connection to the Rio games held last year.

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Spurs had one player at the 2016 games, Heung Min Son representing South Korea. In their first game he came on as a substitute in the 69th minute V Fiji and scored from the penalty spot three minutes later to make the score 5-0, the Koreans would end with eight.

Son started every other game for his country. The second game was a 3-3 draw with Germany and he scored the second goal V Germany to make it 2-2.  The group finished with a 1-0 win over Mexico. Korea then exited the competition in the first knock out game losing by the only goal to Honduras. This early exit allowed him to meet up with Tottenham after their summer games and in time for the new season. Top Image, Son at the Games.

In a previous games Spurs played a GB Olympic team at White Hart Lane in a Trial game in February 1964. Spurs won by the only goal, a first half penalty from Frank Saul. I haven’t been able to uncover the rest of our team at this point but the crowd was 3,000. 

Four years earlier before the 1960 games, which we looked at earlier, the GB side played several trial games.

One of these was against a Chelsea team which GB lost 1-4. Chelsea’s fourth goal came from Jimmy Greaves.
Laurie Brown and Terry Venables were both involved in other trial games, one V Northampton. 

A match V Watford saw Brown score the winner from a penalty as they won 2-1. The last game was V a West Ham side.

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Away from the pitch the design of the stadium build for the Antwerp games in 1920 has been credited to our former star player, Vivian Woodward, a professional architect.  After a great deal of digging (including with the Belgium Olympic committee) I’m fairly confident that Woodward had some input to the design of the main stand (at least) of that stadium. I also found references to Archibald Letch, who designed most of WHL, and he did visit the site on a number of occasions but as far as I can tell this was only professional interest.

Another Tottenham link is Ted Powell who captained the GB side that lost in qualifying for both the 1968 and 1972 Olympics. Ted never played for Spurs but he was a coach at the Spurs academy. He later became the national coach for Malawi and won the East and Central African challenge Cup twice. He then took over as England’s Under 18 coach at the 1993 European Championships. Sol Campbell gave Ted much of the credit for his development

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Above, Mauricio Pochettino, a couple of years after events described below.

When the new West Stand was opened in 1982 the ceremony was undertaken by Sir Stanley Rous of FIFA and Alan Wells, Britain’s Gold medal sprinter.
Alan, a Scot, did seem a slightly odd choice at the time.  

Right - Bill Watson in international action.

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Staying in London and the London Games of 1948, we mentioned in part 1 Bill Watson our fitness coach to the Double team competed in the weightlifting. It seems he came eighth in his section, whilst the GB team came third in the Weightlifting medals table. Sadly there was no Bronze for team achievements.

Only getting as far as the qualifying competition one Mauricio Pochettino played for his countries under 23 side in lead up to 1992 games.

There are some great tales for your summer entertainment @
http://www.indiaspurs.com/blog/hotspur-towers-olympic-tales

The first two parts of teh Spurs Connections can be found @
http://www.indiaspurs.com/blog/hotspur-towers-spurs-and-the-olympics-1
http://www.indiaspurs.com/blog/hotspur-towers-spurs-and-the-olympics-2

Some of these items are a little light on detail, which is why they were not included before. If  you can hep fill in the gaps or know any other Olympic connections not mentioned in the series  then please let us know.

COYS
Keith Harrison.
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