Special meeting at Aberdare track despite cancellation of WMAL T&F Championships.

By Don Hale donhaleblog.blogspot.com/2025


*Left to right – Iris Holder, Roger Garland, Mel Garland, Dorothy Fraser, and Pat Gallagher.

Special meeting at Aberdare track despite cancellation of WMAL T&F Championships...

Report from Roger Garland - Welsh Masters at Aberdare: A very special “meeting” took place at The Ron Jones Stadium in Aberdare last summer.


The Welsh Masters T&F Championships should have been held there on Saturday 29th July, but due to a shortage of officials/helpers the event was cancelled.

However, as Mel and I had already booked hotel accommodation near Aberdare, we decided to go along anyway, for a training session at the Aberdare track.

When we were joined by a few other people, we realised we had assembled a small group that comprised several of the most successful Welsh Masters female athletes of all time!

Collectively, these ladies have amassed over 200 (yes, over two hundred!) Welsh Masters, British Masters, European Masters and World Masters medals.

Roger Garland.
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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