Sad loss of international race walker Noel Blatchford after winning a silver medal at Pescara.

By Don Hale donhaleblog.blogspot.com/2025


*Noel Blatchford (*pictured above) won a silver medal at Pescara.


Sad loss of international race walker Noel Blatchford after winning a silver medal at the Pescara Championships.

https://donhaleblog.blogspot.com

www.welshmastersathletics.co.uk


*Ian Richards reports on the sad and unexpected loss of European Masters silver medal winning veteran race walker Noel Blatchford after the Pescara T&F Championships.

 

It is with much sadness to have to inform you that race walker Noel Blatchford passed away on Friday 20th October in Pescara. 
Noel competed in the 5000m walk W75 on the first Sunday of the European Masters Championships winning a silver medal. She took ill that evening and was admitted to hospital the next day where they discovered that she had suffered a stroke. She remained in hospital in Pescara during which time she suffered further strokes.
Noel has been a regular at the International Masters championships as part of the Great Britain team, winning numerous medals over many years. She was a most friendly person, fiercely competitive, determined, and dedicated to her sport overcoming many setbacks during her career. She was also a qualified athletics’ official, regularly flitting between races and officiating duties. She will be sadly missed!
Noel, ironically, is to be featured in an hour-long film documentary made by Danielle Sellwood of Find It Film in collaboration with photographer Alex Rotas about four British female masters athletes, which is due to be released sometime in the next 6 months. Details of where the film can be seen will be announced in due course.

Ian Richards.

 

  

Don Hale is a best-selling British author and former investigative journalist. He has been Journalist of the Year on three separate occasions in the past. and his extensive campaign to help free Stephen Downing for a murder he did not commit, won him both the Campaign and National Journalist of the Year Awards, A former regional newspaper editor, he was awarded an OBE in 2002 for campaign journalism. He has also been a lead investigator in several other successful, high-profile, miscarriage of justice and human rights cases. He has written several best selling books including - Murder in the Graveyard a true crime mystery story. There is also Buster Crabb - Ian Fleming's Favourite Spy, and Mallard about the battle to create the fastest steam loco in the world against the challenge from Nazi Germany, and more lately, there is The Jersey Boys and Liberation, about the secret stories of occupied Jersey during WW2, told by several resistance heroes and historians.

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