John Sherwood Firth Park: Tributes to Sheffield Olympic medal hero and teacher after death aged 80
The widow of much-loved Sheffield Olympic hero and schoolteacher, John Sherwood, has paid tribute to ‘a proud Yorkshireman’, after his death at the age of 80.
John, who lived in Hillsborough, shot to fame in 1968 when he won the bronze medal in the 400m hurdles at the Mexico Olympics.
He trained for the games with wife Sheila, who won silver in the long jump in the same Olympics, and had to fit his athletics in around his full time job as a schoolteacher.
John died after a long illness at the palliative care unit at the Northern General Hospital on August 19. He leaves wife Sheila, a former teacher at Myers Grove School, and two grown up children.
Sheila has since received messages of condolence from many of John’s former pupils at Firth Park Comprehensive, where he worked for 37 years until his retirement in 2005, and stars of the world of athletics.
She described her Selby-born husband as a proud Yorkshireman, who always gave his best whatever he did, and who achieved a lot.
“There were never any half measures,” she said. “He would do things properly and that was why he had such a great sporting career and was such a good teacher.”
She said John Sherwood was a quiet man, and a gentle giant. He moved to Sheffield to be with Sheila, a Sheffield lass.
She said: “We were unique in 1968, a married couple who both won medals. We’d married six months before the games.
“We were amateurs and both worked full time as teachers. John was at Intake School in Doncaster at that time, I was at Myers Grove. After we won our Olympic medals we just carried on as normal.”
She recalled how they used to train using the facilities they had available.
“There was an athletics track in Hillsborough Park back then,” she said. “John coached kids there when he got back from Mexico.
“But it was a cinder track, and by November, when it was wet, it became quite doughy, so you couldn’t really use it then. So we would then train at home, and running on the roads, in the days before jogging was a thing.”
They also used to train with friends at home.
“We also used to do circuits in our house” said Sheila. “John made cards and put them in parts of the house, and people would do the exercise on the card. Then he’d shout for people to stop and move on to the next one.”
“John was very proud but it was just a medal and a race. When he finished, he didn’t even realise he’d won, because it was so close. We were athletes, but we were also school teachers.”
The couple had met on a blind date, after another famous South Yorkshire athlete, Dorothy Hyman, has been due to meet another athlete, John Cooper. Dorothy asked Sheila to come along, and also brought John Sherwood along. He and Sheila remained as a couple.
Sheila added: “He loved teaching, and didn’t want to go into an office as a head of year. He wanted to stay as a PE teacher.”