Speed ace Freddie’s a gem
By Andy Pearson
Once in a blue moon comes the chance to do business with a genuine legend.
Freddie Williams is one of those people. He combines warm humility, a catalogue of anecdotes spanning 85 years and a sporting track record which saw him become world champion – twice.
A fabulous hour on the phone with him yesterday produced interview material which, hopefully, the Welsh media will carry over the next week.
Tough
Freddie was born in Port Talbot in 1926. They were tough times and his steelworker father wasn’t always able to bring home a pay packet.
But Freddie hopped on a motorbike for the first time aged around seven and rode it around the fields of Margam with brothers Ian and Eric.
At school he was a classmate of one Richard Jenkins who would go on to become world famous in his own field, as actor Richard Burton.
Encouraged
In his teens, Freddie hoped to become a pilot but – with an uncle having died in World War One – his parents encouraged him instead to become an apprentice at Portsmouth dockyards.
At 16 he left home and headed for the south coast and from 1941 helped the war effort by carrying out sterling work as a dispatch rider.
In the post-war years he won a place in the Wembley Lions speedway team which went on to win multiple British championships at a time when the sport was high profile across the UK media.
Champion
His acquaintances included world snooker champion Joe Davis.
In the early 1950s, in front of boisterous 90,000-strong Wembley crowds Freddie twice took the speedway world championship.
In 1950 the trophy was presented to him by naval commander and statesman Lord Louis Mountbatten; in 1953 the man who handed him the prize had just become the first conqueror of Everest – Sir Edmund Hillary.
Olympics
Freddie married an Olympics figure skater, had children who now excel in their own sports at a high level, and went on to run his own motor sales business.
Now based in Berkshire, he gets back to Port Talbot a few times each year to hook up with sister Kate and her family.
His next visit comes on June 25 when he heads west down the M4 after being a VIP guest that day at the Millennium Stadium’s 2011 FIM Doodson British Speedway Grand Prix.
Success
He says: “I always look forward to visiting Kate and my home town.
“How did a 1930s Port Talbot childhood help me achieve success? Well, everything we did back then was done competitively – be it rugby, motorcycle racing, whatever.
“I was only a small boy, playing with some robust boys on the sports field. Very quickly, I figured out that however big they were they couldn’t go anywhere without their legs – so I always went low ino the tackle and became known as a fearless competitor.
Career
“That stood me in good stead for the whole of my speedway career.”
And who’ll win this season’s speedway showpiece occasion in Cardiff in nine days’ time?
“It’ll be the rider who can overcome all the nerves of a massive occasion,” says Freddie, “the man who lets nothing distract him and who can use his ruthless streak to best effect.”
For more on this year’s speedway world championships log on at www.speedwaygp.com
Tags: 2011 FIM Speedway Grand Prix, Cardiff, Doodson, Edmund Hillary, Freddie Williams, Lord Mountbatten, Millennium Stadium, PR, PR agency, Speedway, Wembley Lions
