'If it wasn't for Hitler I could have won a gold medal': Amazing story of Britain's oldest living Olympian

When the 1948 Games came around, Britain was still under food rationing – which didn’t help his preparations for the race

The oldest surviving British athlete of the 1948 London Games was robbed of a gold medal by the Second World War – but he refuses to be bitter.

Gutsy Bill Lucas, 95, who ended up getting a medal for his flying heroics, told the Mirror: “I had a good war instead.”

The 5,000m runner was on course to steal gold in 1940… then the Olympics were axed that year and again in 1944 because of the global conflict.

By the time they were held again in 1948, Bill was 31 and past his prime.

But he says: “I was gratified that I was picked to take part.

“I had been looking forward to going to Helsinki in 1940 but Mr Hitler deprived me of that and of the Games in 1944 but I had a good war instead.

"By the end of it I’d been flying missions for Bomber Command and drinking gallons of beer.”

Bill, from Cowfold, West Sussex, flew 81 death-defying missions over Germany, including the 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne in 1942.

His bravery earned him a Distinguished Flying Cross medal and he was Mentioned in Dispatches.

He volunteered in 1940 and flew for 9 Squadron (Wellingtons), 15 Squadron then 162 Squadron, rising to the rank of Squadron Leader.

However, he can’t help musing: “But for the war I could have won a gold medal or set a world record.”

When the 1948 Games came around, Britain was still under food rationing – which didn’t help Bill’s preparations for his race.

He says: “The athletes were on rations just like everyone else.

“I was pushing 32 and had only had 12 months of reasonably good training, whereas today’s athletes take eight years.

“At the opening ceremony it was 34C. We had four hours of marching about, standing up, sitting down then standing up again.

"We raced two days later so I wasn’t at my best, and didn’t run my best race. None of the British boys did.”

Bill was beaten in the heats by Emil Zatopek, who was dubbed the “Czech Locomotive” and went on to win four Olympic golds.

“Emil and I didn’t say much,” Bill remembers. “We just sort of passed each other on the starting line.

“Was I disappointed with the result? Not really. The war had hardened me up.”

The post-war Games – the last time Britain hosted them until now – were a far cry from London 2012.

Bill, who worked as an insurance broker, says the athletes were housed not in a glitzy Olympic village but in cramped conditions at RAF Uxbridge, Middlesex.

“I’d been stationed there when I joined up so I preferred to stay at home,” he adds.

There were no Games road lanes or other special treatment for competitors, either.

Bill simply took the bus from his home in Surrey to Croydon, the train to London and then the Tube to Wembley.

“I walked to the stadium with the fans,” he says. “Everybody was just the same.

“When my race finished I went home and went back to work – but I did go back for the closing ceremony.

"They gave us a blazer, tracksuit, vest and a beret and that was about it.”

Bill, who lives with his wife Sheena, still wears his blazer with pride, and has the 1948 Games programme of his 5,000m battle with Zatopek, which cost a shilling.

He remains heavily involved with athletics, despite not being able to walk very well, and has been a member of London’s Belgrave Harriers for 77 years.

For a long time he was the announcer at London’s now defunct White City stadium, where he was known as “the golden voice of athletics”.

And currently he is campaigning against the planned closure of the Broadbridge Heath Leisure Centre in Horsham, West Sussex, which has a 400m running track.

“It’s a marvellous centre,” he says. “They’ll probably knock it down and build houses.”

Bill is involved in the RAF Association and the Royal British Legion, too, and helped raise £10,000 towards the £7.5million Bomber Command memorial unveiled by the Queen last month.

“I’m also in a group called PROBUS – Poor Retired Old B****** Unfit for Sex,” he adds with a glint in his eye.

At the moment Bill is looking forward to London 2012, and has been contacted by the British Olympics Association after a public outcry persuaded them to involve our 1948 athletes.

He’s had lunch with Princess Anne and toured Team GB’s headquarters with the other surviving competitors.

They include Dorothy Tyler, 92, who won the high-jump silver, John Parlett, 82, an 800m finalist, and his wife Dorothy Manley, 85, the 100m silver medallist.

Bill has also been given tickets to the final of this year’s 5,000m race.

He says: “I’m pleased to get the tickets and I did enjoy the lunch.

“There had been talk some time ago of me carrying the torch in the relay before the Games but it never amounted to anything.

“I can’t walk more than about 200 yards these days but it would have been nice if a few of the Belgrave Harriers could have pushed me in a wheelchair while I held the torch.”

He plans to watch as much of London 2012 as he can on a new television he has bought especially for the Games. “We will certainly have a good view,” he says.

“At lunchtimes I will have a gin and tonic, and in the evenings Sheena and I will pour ourselves a Scotch as we usually do at 5.40pm. On the dot.”

Whistleblower Reveals Plan To Evacuate London During Olympics

200,000 casket linings on standby says undercover journalist who infiltrated security team

By Paul Joseph Watson / Infowars

An undercover journalist going by the pseudonym ‘Lee Hazledean’ has blown the whistle on astounding revelations about how he infiltrated the G4S – the company responsible for security at the London Olympics – and discovered shocking plans for the evacuation of London, 200,000 ‘casket linings’ being on standby, along with botched security procedures that leave the Games wide open to attack.



Hazledean’s interview with Tony Gosling, Bilderberg.org editor and host of BCFM’s Friday Drivetime, has gone viral on the web over the last few days. Hazledean is an undercover journalist for a television program in London and has worked with news agencies on hard-hitting subjects, but when he approached the mainstream media with his bombshell story, they showed no interest.

When Hazledean asked Channel 4 News Home Affairs Correspondent Andy Davies if he would run the story, Davies said he wasn’t interested and days later Channel 4 ran a puff piece about G4S which portrayed the organization as competent and trustworthy.

“I sent him an email, I called, he wasn’t interested and he said there’s a media blackout on this kind of story, that nobody would be interested in running it,” said Hazledean.

In the interview, Hazledean divulges how he merely had to fill in an application form to get a job with G4S, the private company providing security for the Olympics, that he underwent no background check whatsoever, and that his personal references were not checked.

Employees are given just two days of training to run airport-style security checkpoints which include body scanners, which Hazledean said “would be turned off completely” at peak times, meaning terrorists could just walk straight into the event with ammunition or explosives and have an excellent chance of remaining undetected.

“In fact, I was asked to be a would-be terrorist on the final training day and I was given a knife, a gun and an IED, and on all three occasions throughout the day I got through the metal detector and I also got through the x-ray machine scanner,” said Hazledean, adding that terrorists could quite easily stage a “massacre” given the lax nature of the security.

“They’re not training them properly…it’s quite open to a terrorist attack very easily and I don’t say that lightly,” said Hazledean, adding that he witnessed G4S members doing drug deals while training classes were taking place, while others were taking surveillance photos on their cellphones of supposedly secure areas. Hazledean said a lot of the security staff were poorly qualified and that many of them could barely speak English.

Hazledean also revealed how the large contingent of soldiers being brought into London for the Olympic Games included “a lot of UN troops being posted in and around London,” including American and German troops.

The whistleblower also revealed how unauthorized personnel were being handed G4S uniforms and that uniforms had been stolen.

Hazledean’s most chilling revelation was how he learned about preparations to evacuate London and how, “The security guards used for the Olympics will be at the forefront of getting the public out of London.”

“They seem quite serious about it, they’ve spent a lot of time on this,” said Hazledean, noting how G4S spent two hours talking about the evacuation of London in comparison to just half an hour talking about security screening procedures for the Olympics itself.

The whistleblower also noted how the 100,000 plus troops that would be stationed in London during the Olympics would be enough to carry out such a large scale evacuation.

Another chilling facet Hazledean learned was that 200,000 casket linings (temporary coffins) were being shipped in to London that can hold four bodies each. The whistleblower expressed his amazement at why security guards working on mundane screening procedures would need to be told such information.

The whistleblower also revealed how he was told Predator drones would be circling London in readiness for terrorist attacks, and that G4S employees were shown a video of a drone killing a group of people in Afghanistan.

Hazledean noted how G4S leaders saw the public as “the scum of the earth” and also told their employees that the police had no authority over them. He also related how one of the leaders told him that an event after the Olympics would be a “defining moment” for London but when pressed, refused to divulge what she meant.

Hazledean is not the first to blow the whistle on G4S. Earlier this month, data input clerk Sarah Hubble revealed that she was fired by G4S after complaining that G4S was cutting corners in their security preparations for the Olympics and that she herself had not been vetted.

Speaking with Infowars, Hazledean said that he had been making contingency plans for if his life was put in danger or if he became a target for the authorities in any other way after blowing the whistle on the scandal.

Asked about a meme circulating the web that conspiracy theories about a false flag attack occurring at the London Olympics are being deliberately allowed to proliferate in order to make ‘truthers’ look paranoid after nothing happens, Hazledean stressed that merely getting the story out was necessary as it could derail any planned attack.