Race walking has always been pretty strong in Sussex even before the formation of the Steyning Athletic Club in 1951 but 1958 became an important date for Steyning and Sussex Race-walking when Olympic 50km Champion Norman Read persuaded seventeen year old Ron Penfold to restart racing.
Norman had become a foundation member of the Steyning Club with Johnny Henderson, when the Brighton & County Harriers merged with the Sussex Walking and Athletic Club in 1951 and the Steyning based members decided to set up their own Walking Club.
Henderson was one of the top British distance walkers and was listed as an Olympic possible, I believe, for both the 1940 and 48 Olympic Games. Henderson was the brains for the split and the Secretary for many years. He worked as a caretaker at Christ’s Hospital and would walk from his home at Steyning to work every day and then walk home after a good day’s work.
Ronald Arthur Penfold was born at Steyning on 14th October 1941 and attended the Steyning primary and Secondary Schools but he did not see his 
father, Arthur, until 1945, when he was four, and in Shoreham Hospital with scarlet fever and his father was also in hospital, weighing just 8st after being a German Prisoner of War.
Ron was nearly a founder member as in 1950 he started walking in the Under Ten races at the long established Easter Monday walks but was not old enough to join a club until after the new Club was established but a few months later he became a member of the Steyning Athletic Club. He has several races and played in goal for the Steyning Secondary football until 1953 when he was hospitalised for two months at Worthing with Rheumatic Fever. This put paid to his physical activities for many years and had to take six months off school.
Following Norman’s encouragement in 1958, several Hospital checks he was given the all clear to take up racing again and finished fourth in the Easter Monday 7-mile race.
Later that year he won his first Sussex title when he took the Youths (U17) One mile and Johnny Henderson began coaching him, the only coach he ever had.
When he left school he took an Electrical Apprentice near home but was made redundant in 1956 and took a post in Crawley moving there in 1968 and still lives in the same house with his wife Pat, whom he married in 1964.
Once settled in Crawley Pat worked at St Catherine’s Hospice at Crawley and when she retired Ron joined her, doing voluntary work at the Hospice, something they did for 35 years. They had two sons and a daughter but only Caroline did much race walking and in her teens showed considerable promise in the Steyning team with Suzanne Ford-Dunn and Chelsea Groves.
Ron was unsuccessful in drumming up support for race walking in the Crawley area and has now completed nearly seventy years with the Steyning
Club.
The style and speed coaching from Henderson worked wonders and in both 1959 and 1960 he led the Steyning team to victory in the National Junior 5-mile road walking championship. In 1960 he also won his first senior Sussex medal when he finished third in the 20-mile championship in 3:18:52 and he was just 18 years old. Later in the year he was still young enough to compete and win the Sussex One-mile walking title in 7:50.6s while 1961 he won the Sussex 10-mile road walking title in 86:09 ahead of race favourite Malcolm Tadd (Brighton) and this year he won
Ron’s first Easter Monday 15-mile walk was in 1964 which he won in 2:07:02s which was the second fastest time for the course behind the great Norman Read.
He had many hard battles with the likes of top class club mates like Dennis Read, Norman’s younger brother, Darrell Stone, Graham Morris, Gareth Brown and Donald Bearman as well as Brighton & Hove’s Arthur Jones and Mike Parker as he matured through from the 1960s to the present day and many times these, then up and coming youngsters, would show him the way home.
However he did, over the years, win no less that thirteen Sussex titles, collect 18 silver medals and 23 bronze as well as many team medals. His final gold medal was a victory in the 3000m track championships just last year (2019).
“Probably” said Ron “1969 was my best year when I won the Sussex 10-mile, 20-mile road titles and a silver medal in the 3000m track walk when I clocked my fastest time of 13:33s and I also won the Easter Monday 15-mile race which is always a feather in anyone’s cap”.
Ron also won the final Easter Monday 15-mile walk in 2007.
“My best performance came in 2009 at the European Veterans 10k road walk in the European Veterans M65 age group in 58:06”
Ron has won many medals in Masters Event including 23 Gold, 9 silver and one bronze, some of these have been team medals.
I did the London to Brighton in 1966 finishing in 9h 36m ?s, I was hoping for a faster time but had shoe problems, and did 3 Hastings to Brighton walking races, and in 1990 race walked the London Marathon.
“My committee and organiser roles started some time in my early twenties, when I joined the Steyning Committee, I covered most roles at some time, including handicapper, Club Captain, Reports for the Shoreham Herald and West Sussex Times, and over the last 30 odd years have organised the races from mainly behind the scenes, arranging the fixture lists, venue booking arranging judges, writing up the results and reports and circulating them, sorting out the road courses and signage and putting out the road signs on race days, and up to a few years ago then racing and then collecting in the signs. I was replaced on the committee in about 2010 when they restructured it. Ian Richards took over from me to be Walking Captain on the committee I served for nearly 50 years. I still continue to do all of the roles mentioned above for Steyning and Sussex.”
“My first spell on the Sussex AA Committee as Walking Secretary would have been in the 60/70’s, I then took it on again from Alan Buchannan in 1987 and have held it for the last 33 years. Although it is now as Head of the Race Walking Panel.
In 2013 Ron was diagnosed with secondary Melanoma requiring a major operation and Radiotherapy but he has fought through this and continues to do short races and regularly race walk the local Park run and managed to finish ahead of some of the runners.
He has just completed his term as President of the Sussex County Athletic Association and has been elected a Life Member.
Walking in England is nowhere near where it was even at the end of the last century but without the dedication of Ron Penfold it would not be here at all.