Norman Wainwright - Pictures from a great swimming career

Norman Wainwright's father was Manager of Hanley Baths and he first achieved local celebrity as a member of Hanley Swimming Team. However, by the time this photograph was taken he had already become an international (by being selected as one of the 1932 Olympic squad for the Games held in Los Angeles), as can be seen from the Union flag on the front of his costume.	International competition in the 1930s usually meant travel by train and boat (which could take days, if not weeks, such as when he represented England in the 1938 Empire Games, held in Sydney, Australia). However, this photograph records a rare trip on a plane from Meir aerodrome (now long gone). The person pictured leaving with him (carrying the briefcase) is his coach, Harry Koskie, who had also been a member of the Hanley Swimming Team.
Although Norman competed in individual events he was very proud of being a team member and became English Team captain in 1933, aged only 19, and he went on to lead the British Olympic Swimming Team at the London Games, held in 1948 (see picture below) by which time he was 34. The photograph above is of the men's swimming team for the first European Championships, which were held in 1934 at Magdeburgh, Germany.	Norman swam in national relay teams as well as individual event and he is pictured here with the squad who competed for Britain at the European Championships in 1934 (Harry Koskie, also in the photograph, was the team coach)
Germany in 1934 (and even more so at the 1936 Berlin Olympics) was in the grip of Hitler's rule and the British team are seen here passing by a crowd giving the Nazi salute.	This is a panoramic view of the same parade. The competition pool was created by putting seating around part of an ice-cold lake.
Norman was famous for the purity of his stroke and worked hard, under Harry Koskie's guidance to adapt and develop his technique to help shave seconds of his time at each distance. The picture above taken of the start of the 1934 European Championship 400 metre semi-final (he won a bronze medal in the 1500 metres), shows the marked difference between the racing dive used by Norman and the two competitors to his right and the two pictured higher in flight to his left.	It was often said of his crawl stroke that he made it look easy and created little disturbance in the water around him, as this photograph (taken by the Manchester Guardian) from a British Championship illustrates.
By the time of his marriage to Betty Porter, in October 1938, he was a national as well as local sporting celebrity who had captured all of the domestic freestyle records, as this report from the Sentinel shows.	His swimming career included winning 21 ASA titles, holding 50 ASA & British Native records, receiving medals in two Empire & European Championships and many other trophies. He also represented his country in three Olympic Games and is seen above leading the athletes’ procession at Wembley Stadium in1948 as Captain of the British Olympic Swimming Team.
He liked to encourage and teach young swimmers, especially as his long competitive career drew to a close, as is illustrated by this picture from the Sentinel taken of Norman with children from North Staffordshire in 1955.	A couple of years before he died (in May 2000), he was honoured by a Civic visit from the Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent, Doug Brown (because by then arthritis and heart trouble greatly restricted his movements) and he was photographed with some of his ASA championship trophies.

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