Ron Roddan Dead: What Happened To The Legendary Team GB Olympic Coach?

Linford Christie OBE, a former sprinter from the United Kingdom, was the coach of Ron Roddan, who began coaching him in 1979. Roddan, a former Civil Service laboratory assistant, was a sprinter in the 1950s and 1960s. Over the course of his coaching career, he has had over 30 athletes selected for the British team. Roddan is currently coaching Malcolm Christie.

image credit; The Sun

Roddan first met Christie while both were in high school in Fulham, London.

Speaking in a High Court libel hearing in 1998, Roddan told the jury that a magazine article by John McVicar alleging Linford Christie took drugs to get to the top was a “fairy story”, describing a suggestion that the Olympic gold medallist’s impressive physique may have been due to taking steroids or other performance-enhancing banned substances as “ridiculous”. In response to Sebastian Coe’s claims that Christie’s time as British athletic captain was marred by “continual conflict,” Roddan said he was “surprised that someone of such so-called brevity would come out with a load of rubbish like this” and insisted that Christie had the support of his fellow athletes in the various British athletic teams in which he competed.

Roddan was named London Regional Council Performance Coach of the Year in February 2011. Prior to this, he received the National Performance Coach award at the England Athletics Hall of Fame and the National Volunteer Awards in October 2010.