Saturday 16 January 2010

Harry Cornforth

As I mentioned last month, my mum's been fishing out some old photos, and she found some of my grandfather, Harry Cornforth. He was a seriously good swimmer and water polo player who missed out on the chance to compete for a place in the Olympics because he couldn't get a paid leave of absence from his job on the railways to train with the squad, and couldn't afford to do it without pay. What an opportunity missed. We found this picture of him with his local water polo team - we think it must be from the mid-late 1930's. Harry is the one on the right in the back row. You've just got to love those fantastic knitted body suits.





He did a lot of what we would now call wild swimming when he was a boy, and he also taught me to swim. He died a few years ago, but he would have absolutely loved all of this Channel swimming.

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