Brecon Athletics Club have revealed their new president.
After two years without a club president Brecon Athletics Club have announced that their replacement for long-time President Terry Notman is former junior member and world athletics star Kirsty Wade.
Kirsty lives on the Isle of Lewis off the west coast of Scotland but has often talked fondly of her time as a junior at Brecon AC when she lived in Llandrindod Wells and attended school there. The connection was remade in 2018 when Kirsty was invited to the clubs 50th birthday celebrations and, although unable to attend, sent a very supportive video message and expressed a wish to be involved with the club. When the post of President became free, Kirsty was then the natural choice.
As Kirsty McDermott, Kirsty began her meteoric rise to fame with victory in the U15 AAA’s Championship 800m in a fantastic time of 2.11.10 before winning the U17 crown the following year, four seconds quicker. However, in 1982 Kirsty really came to prominence when she won the Commonwealth Games 800m title in Brisbane. In 1985 she smashed the UK 800m record recording 1.57.42 which stood as a record for 10 years and is still the fifth fastest UK time ever.
Current world star Keely Hodgkinson and former Olympic winner Kelly Holmes are only a little quicker than this. She also broke the UK mile record although that was broken shortly afterwards by the controversial Zola Budd.
In 1986 Kirsty (now Wade) became the first woman to win both the 800m and 1500m in the Commonwealth Games when they were held in Edinburgh. In 1987, Kirsty won the European Cup 1500m and over the next four years she competed for GB at two World Championships (Rome and Tokyo) as well as the Seoul Olympics. She enjoyed an outstanding athletics career - that started in the mid 1970s when her PE teacher Tes Davies suggested that she join Brecon AC at the age of 11!
The club would also like to express gratitude to Terry for all that he did to promote Brecon AC over many years. Very keen on development it was under his watch that the club had a lot of success with junior and senior track and field competition and introduced the very successful 3,4,5 road race series that started 20 years ago and is now stronger than ever.