Statistics and year lists collected by the athletics journalist and statistician Mel Watman. Papers are ordered chronologically and provide comprehensive worldwide statistics for 1980 to 1993 inclusive.
Papers of Melvyn (Mel) Watman
Archive Collection
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- ReferenceGB 150 ATH/MW
- Dates of Creation1980 - 1993
- Name of Creator
- Language of MaterialEnglish
- Physical Description3 standard boxes (comprising 14 files)
Scope and Content
Administrative / Biographical History
Melvyn (Mel) Watman was born in 1938, his birth registered in Hackney during the June quarter of that year. He is perhaps best known as the editor of Athletics Weekly and a well respected athletics writer, historian and statistician. His interest in athletics was sparked in 1950 during a Hackney Downs School trip to the AAA Championships at White City where he saw Arthur Wint, McDonald Bailey and Roger Bannister. As a Scottish international, Mel was close to Olympic marathon selection for Great Britain in 1968 although injuries hindered further progression. He later became a prodigious fell runner.
He began submitting articles to Athletics Weekly whilst still at school. These submissions continued whilst he trained as a journalist at the Hatfield and Potters Bar Gazette. As a teenager he co-founded the National Union of Track Statisticians (NUTS) with Alf Wilkins and Stan Greenberg. He was largely responsible for its first yearbook. In 1959 he gained a diploma in journalism and in September 1959 reported for The Times on the World Student Games held in Turin. A period of national service in the RAF followed. During these years he continued to write for Athletics Weekly at weekends and edit its monthly offshoot World Athletics.
In 1960 Mel attended the Rome Olympic Games as its youngest accredited reporter. He was demobbed in 1961 and then appointed to Athletics Weekly full-time, becoming its editor in 1968. He remained as editor until 1988, one year after it was bought out by EMAP. He then joined a new magazine, Athletics Today, as co-editor. This magazine folded in 1994 and after this, Mel co-produced the newsletter Athletics International with fellow journalist Peter Matthews.
Mel has written several books on the history of athletics including five editions of the Encyclopaedia of Athletics, All-Time Greats of British Athletics and and The Official History of the Amateur Athletic Association. He has worked as athletics statistician for Eurosport and Sky Sports and has deputised for Stan Greenberg at the BBC. He was elected as Honorary President of the British Athletics Writers' Association, inducted into the England Athletics Hall of Fame in 2013 and awarded an MBE for services to athletics and to the Myeloma Foundation.
Sources: papers of Melvyn Watman; article accessed 10 October 2014 from: http://www.briansacks.com/html/jewish_athletics_2012.html; article accessed 10 October 2014 from: http://roger-robinson.com/news/british-awards-for-mel-watman-and-mel-edwards.shtml
Arrangement
Material arranged chronologically.
Access Information
Open. Access to all registered researchers.
Acquisition Information
Deposited with the NCAL by Mel Watman, January 1996.
Other Finding Aids
Please see full catalogue for more information.
Archivist's Note
Papers arranged and described by Mark Eccleston, September 2014, in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; and in-house cataloguing guidelines.
Conditions Governing Use
Permission to make any published use of any material from the collection must be sought in advance in writing from the Director of Special Collections (email: special-collections@contacts.bham.ac.uk). Identification of copyright holders of unpublished material is often difficult. Special Collections will assist where possible with identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material.
Custodial History
This collection was previously in the custody of the National Centre for Athletics Literature (NCAL).