Edgar James Meddings (5 June 1923 – 25 December 2020) was a British

bobsled Bobsleigh or bobsled is a team winter sport that involves making timed runs down narrow, twisting, banked, iced tracks in a gravity-powered sleigh. International bobsleigh competitions are governed by the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Feder ...

der who competed in the late 1940s. He finished 15th in the four-man event at the

1948 Winter Olympics The 1948 Winter Olympics, officially known as the V Olympic Winter Games (german: V. Olympische Winterspiele; french: Ves Jeux olympiques d'hiver; it, V Giochi olimpici invernali; rm, V Gieus olimpics d'enviern) and commonly known as St. Moritz ...

in St. Moritz. Ed Meddings was born in

Dilhorne Dilhorne is an ancient parish and village in Staffordshire, three miles from Cheadle and six miles from Stoke-on-Trent. The village is within the Staffordshire Moorlands area. Historically the village has been in the Parish of Dilhorne and t ...

, Staffordshire, the son of a farmer, and educated at King Edward VI School Lichfield. He joined the

RAF The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

in 1939 initially as an apprentice armourer, qualifying as a

pilot An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...

in 1943 on his 20th birthday. The British bobsleigh team for the 1948 Olympics was built around RAF personnel. A suitable physique, he was asked in summer 1947 if he was interested in bobsleigh, but he didn’t know what it was. He was however chosen as part of a 13 man squad to go to St Moritz and practice the sport, being selected in the British second quartet for the Olympics. He married his wife Anne in 1956 and they had three children. He remained in the RAF until 1968, and settled in

Hinton Charterhouse __NOTOC__ Hinton may refer to: Places Australia *Hinton, New South Wales Canada *Hinton, Alberta ** Hinton/Entrance Airport ** Hinton/Jasper-Hinton Airport ** Hinton CN railway station England * Hinton, Dorset, a civil parish **Hinton Martell, D ...

where for around 40 years he was an active groundsman and umpire for the local

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

club.

References

External links

1948 bobsleigh four-man resultsBritish Olympic Association profile
1923 births 2020 deaths Bobsledders at the 1948 Winter Olympics British male bobsledders Olympic bobsledders of Great Britain Royal Air Force pilots of World War II {{UK-bobsleigh-bio-stub