Arthur Roy Cruttenden’s family nickname was “The Boss” and he certainly lived up to the title. An Olympian and British record holder, Cruttenden dominated the national scene for nearly a decade and held the county record for just shy of 60 years.
Roy (as he was known) was born on 18th February 1925 in Brighton, to mum Minnie and dad Arthur Cyril Cruttenden, a well-respected builder and housing developer. Sadly Minnie died when Roy was just two years old.
Educated at Varndean Grammar School, Roy excelled both on the sports pitch and academically. His father had founded Brighton and Hove cricket club, so he gravitated towards that sport, whilst also playing football for the Old Varndeanians, then the leading Sussex non-league club, and Southwick FC.
During the 1930s Roy was a regular ball boy at Withdean for the Davis Cup tennis tournaments. He would later train at Withdean as a member of Brighton and Hove AC and in 1956, at the Sussex Athletics Championships, set an English Long Jump record of 7.45m at his home track. This broke Harold Abrahams' 32 year old mark of 7.38m and 64 years later Roy's leap, pictured above, is still the County Championship Best Performance.
During the war years, The Boss served in the Home Guard before being commissioned into the Royal Engineers, where he rose to the rank of captain. In 1943, whilst a serving officer, he studied Civil Engineering at Christ’s College, Cambridge.
Roy had first discovered his talent for long jumping in the mid 1930s, when he broke all the Varndean school records, but interestingly his first success was in the high jump. In addition he was a talented sprinter and quarter miler, where he was the leading Sussex athlete in his age group. In fact Cruttenden did not stop playing football or running until about 1949 when his international career as a long jumper started to take off.
He married Phyllis Watkins, a lecturer in Physical Education in Brighton, in 1950, the same year he earned his first international vest in the Great Britain vs. France match, in Bordeaux.
Roy won a record nine AAA Long Jump medals; two golds (1956/7), six silvers and a bronze. However, when he won the silvers he was the top finishing British athlete, as the meet was open to overseas competitors. To date no British long jump male has won more AAA/British Champs medals than The Boss, with Welsh legend, Lynn Davies and Chris Tomlinson both one below with eight.
Cruttenden competed in one Olympic Games in 1956 in Melbourne, where he came 9th with 7.15m, after jumping 7.32 to qualify. Immediately after the Olympics, Roy jumped his Sussex record of 7.59m in a Commonwealth vs. USA match in New South Wales. A week earlier this would have been good enough for the Olympic bronze medal. The distance was a British record unsurpassed for four years, until broken by Lynn Davies in 1960. However, it stood as a Sussex record for almost 60 years until another Brighton and Hove athlete, Tom French, improved it by just one centimetre in 2016.
In 1957 Roy had the honour of captaining the English Athletics team. However, the following year was to be his last as a competitive athlete. He went to the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games at Cardiff, where he came a "disappointing" fifth. Prior to the Games, Roy had been working in Gibraltar as an Admiralty engineer and had to dig out and build his own long jump pit, as none existed. He recalled how difficult it had been to train effectively in these conditions and how much this impacted on his performance at Cardiff. He subsequently retired aged 33.
By this point Roy was the father of two sons, Timothy and Richard born in 1955 and 1957 respectively.
The Boss was an international athlete from 1950 – 1958 with Brighton and Hove Athletics Club, and then the Polytechnic Harriers. He represented England, Great Britain, the British Empire and Commonwealth.
The successful career engineer and qualified deep sea diver was described by his family as a “‘Sussex Man’ through and through; dutiful, dignified and accomplished.”
Roy Cruttenden died on 3rd June 2019 aged 94.
Melanie Anning