11 March 2024

By Robert Treharne Jones

As the Leander archivist I regularly field questions about our sport and its history, and this particular question started innocuously enough, just before Christmas:

“Hi I found some old oars,” it began.

“They’re painted with Leander Club, European Championships, and Goblet and Nickalls Cup, both from 1957 with DAT LEADLEY and CGV DAVIDGE – any idea what they are?” it went on.

“I was about to toss them in the bin but figured I’d check first,” it ended.

I quickly wrote back to the enquirer, whose name was Phil, to tell him what most members of this group will know only too well – that Tony Leadley and Christopher Davidge were two of the most successful GB oarsmen of the post-War years.

Both had rowed in the Boat Race, though never against each other – Leadley had rowed for Cambridge in ‘53, and Davidge three times for Oxford between ’49 and ‘52, before they went on to their illustrious international careers.

The two men trained at Henley as part of the Barn Cottage group, based at the home of one of the group’s protagonists, Teddy Selwyn. This elite corps also included Sam Mackenzie, who would go on to win the Diamonds six times in succession, a record that still stands.

Leadley and Davidge, now racing as Leander, won the Goblets at Henley in 1957 and again in ’58 – they used their first win as a springboard to take them to the European Championships almost two months later in Duisburg. The race for the leading positions finished exactly as it had done in Henley, with the Austrians, Alfred Sageder and Josef Kloimstein, taking second place behind Leadley and Davidge on both occasions. In the single sculls, Sam Mackenzie won gold for Australia, with the Soviet sculler Vyacheslav Ivanov in third place for bronze.

The European gold medals won by Leadley and Davidge were mounted, framed, and hung on the wall of the Leander dining room where they have remained ever since.

I knew that Tony Leadley was still alive and living in Australia, at some 96 years of age, as I was able to tell my correspondent, but Christopher Davidge had died in 2014.

I then moved on to more practical matters:

“Can you tell me about the current state of these oars, and where you found them?” I wrote. “I’m assuming they need a bit of work to clean them up? Whereabouts in the country are you?”

“I’m actually from Port Stephens, New South Wales, Australia!” replied Phil.

“We’ve recently been cleaning out a property and stumbled across them. I just thought maybe whoever they are might have family that’s interested in having them,” he said.

The photo which Phil attached confirmed what I already suspected – that the blades were indeed in a sorry state, and a far cry from the prestigious events where they had been earned.

I immediately emailed Tony Leadley to ask for the back story to these blades, since I guessed that he must have taken them over when he moved there. Might he have mislaid them, I asked, or maybe he had decided he no longer had space to store them?

Less than 24 hours later I had a reply….

“The oars were in a storage facility in Sydney some 50 years ago, along with some other furniture that was too big for the new unit I had moved into,” wrote Tony.

“Someone broke into the place and, along with some of the furniture, took the oars and some other stuff of no great importance. I tried in vain, but had no success in finding out who took them. I never saw them again!” he went on.

Tony reckoned there were originally four blades, while he left several more in England where his mother distributed them to various clubs after his father had died and she sold the house.

The following day Tony reported that he had spoken to Phil, who promised to bring the blades over when he made one of his frequent trips to Sydney, just over 100 miles away.

Meanwhile, Tony was able to tell me that he had arrived in Oz in December 1962, just missing the big freeze which lasted three months in the UK that winter. Also making the journey ‘down under’ were his wife and three children, a dog, a cat, a container of furniture, and those blades.

He started work two weeks after Christmas at TV station ATN 7 in Sydney and spent two years there in the PR department before starting his own PR company that kept him busy for the rest of his life.

“My clients were all interesting and over the years I became involved in the acting world and performed in many TV series, and a great number of TV commercials,” he wrote.

Tony eventually retired from all business at the age of ninety!

Meanwhile the blades had arrived in Sydney, been given a light dusting and then, at my request, a photoshoot was organised, with Tony resplendent in Leander No. 1 rig despite the heat of the Australian sun!

Postscript: Tony Leadley is now the oldest living Blue from either University to have rowed in the Boat Race. He last came to the UK pre-Covid in 2018 for the 65th anniversary of the great Cambridge win of 1953 when they triumphed by more than eight lengths over the old adversary.

Some members of the crew had already passed away by then, and the survivors had plans to reconvene for the 70th anniversary, but it was not to be. “We are now down to only three of us still standing and it seemed too daunting as age takes its toll,” ended Tony.