By Philip Barker
Two Canadians have established the identity of the first Welsh Olympian and another little-known participant from 1908.

William Lloyd Phillips
In the records of the 1900 Paris Games, William Lloyd Phillips from Monmouthshire was only listed as “Phillips”.
Very little was known about him until the research carried out by Rob Gilmore and Connor Mah.
“It began quite innocently one morning back in May when I just decided to have a little fun with some of the early British ‘’anonymous” names” said Gilmore.
British newspaper archives revealed some important extra information.
Phillips was born on September 8th, 1881. He moved to London where he became a member of the historic German Gymnasium behind St. Pancras railway station.
This had been established in the mid-19th century by a group of German emigres and had hosted indoor events at the first National Olympian Games in 1866.
Research by Gilmore and Mah also revealed that Phillips had travelled widely visiting New Zealand and then the United States of America where he worked for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Brooklyn.
An American newspaper cutting confirmed that Phillips had taken part in the 1900 Olympics in Paris.
He is listed as finishing 73rd overall in the competition held at the Velodrome de Vincennes, an outdoor stadium which still exists on the outskirts of Paris.
The researchers consulted census documents to trace his life which included time in Bournemouth around 1907 as a “teacher of physical culture fencing and gymnastics.”
He had travelled to New Zealand by the time of the first world war and further papers reveal his enlistment in the New Zealand expeditionary force.
A World War two draft card confirmed that he was resident in Florida in 1942 and forms attest to his naturalisation in the United States of America. He died in 1966 aged 85.
There had been no National Olympic Committee in Great Britain when Phillips first competed in the Olympics in 1900 as the British Olympic Association was not formally constituted until 1905.
Previously it had been believed that Paul Radmilovic, also known as Paolo, was the first Welsh Olympian. He won four gold medals from 1908 to 1920 and was a swimmer and water polo player.
The discovery of 1908 gymnast Albert Edward Hawkins came as the culmination of a longer-term project to find out more about gymnasts who took part at the 1908 Olympics.
Hawkins was born on 21st May 1886 and was the son of a coal miner. He was born in Abertillery and had followed his father down the pit.

Albert Edward Hawkins and two of his gymnastics medals (photos courtesy of his family)
An article in the South Wales Gazette reported on an evening of gymnastics staged by the Powell’s Tillery Institute gymnastics club which spoke of “the work of Hawkins on the drill as one of the special features of the evening,” and offered vital clues to his identity.
In 1908, he was a member of the British gymnastics squad which finished eighth in the team event at the Olympics.
A family tree eventually led to a surviving relative who confirmed that Hawkins had lived to the age of 83 and had died in 1969.
ISOH member Hilary Evans alerted the Welsh gymnastics community to the new information.
“These are amazing discoveries by the Olympic historians and merely underline the rich tradition of gymnastics here in Wales,” Beverley Smith of Welsh Gymnastics said.
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