Frequently the official that most athletes and supporters notice at athletic meetings is the starter because they normally wear a red coat and cap as they need to be seen. It is not a job for a shy person but certainly for one that needs to be noticed.
Cyrus Jenkins was the first Sussex Starter I remember and he operated through the thirties and forties with J.S (Stanley) Lyon starting at the Worthing meetings, until E.C.Crishop took over for a few years before Joe Butchers from the Brighton & County Harriers, a starter that many of our more mature athletes will remember, took up the guns.
Both were quite forceful personalities and Joe followed in the same mould and was quite an extrovert character with a loud voice which he used to good effect. In the twenties/thirties, he was a talented sprinter middle-distance runner and winner of many Sussex track titles. He and his brother Reg worked at Lewes racecourse and although Reg was a jockey, and did a little competitive running, Joe was a little too big and was 
much better as a runner and became a top Sussex athlete.
Joe commenced his role as a starter during the War and by the time Sussex athletics moved to the Hove Stadium in 1949 he was the number one Sussex Starter. Even when arthritis caused trouble with his right shoulder he changed to be a left-handed starter and he continued in that role until he was forced to retire in 1982.
Fred Jordan (Horsham Blue Star) took over the mantle as the number one Sussex starter mentoring Tony Roberts who frequently acted as his deputy.
No less than four Sussex starters went on to become President of the Sussex County Athletics Association.
Tony Roberts was born on 1st August 1940 just inside the Sussex border at Haslemere and went to Rydon School he actually started starting at Worthing, under the supervision of Worthing starter Cliff Howard, while still a teenager and he combined this with a successful competitive career for many years.
He was a versatile and talented athlete competing over a wide range of events from sprints right through to cross-country and he can claim to have beaten both Chris Carter and Steve Ovett in Sussex competitions.
As a youth, he won the Sussex Youths steeplechase title in 1956 and he made many appearances for Sussex in Inter-county matches including, he remembers, in 1966 when, at Croydon, the track was surrounded by portable radios as the match clashed with an important football final just a few miles away at Wembley.
He won some gold relay medals but in 1966 he won a much-coveted gold team medal as a team member of the Worthing & District Harriers club that won the Sussex senior cross-country championships. The first time that neither Horsham Blue Star nor the Brighton Club had won the senior team championship since 1925. It was in this race that he finished 13th, ahead of up and coming British middle-distance runner Chris Carter, running for Hove A.C, who later that year would finish fifth in the Commonwealth Games 800 metres in Jamaica.
In 1969 he came face to face with Steve Ovett who had yet to win his first English Schools junior title. In an Open 400m at Withdean, Ovett was the youngest runner in the field and the future Olympic Champion was not quite strong enough to hold off the more mature Worthing runner and Tony edged victory, but Ovett was only fourteen.
This was the year that Tony married Kate and they celebrated their Golden Anniversary in 2019, they have a 'lovely daughter', Julie, who is now 50, who was born with a disability.
All this time Tony was trying to balance his competing with his starting for which he was getting more and more requests.
There were medals when he moved into the Masters age groups including winning the British M40 200 title at Birmingham in 1981 and his swansong came at the European Master’s championship in Sweden in 1996 then he won a bronze medal with the Great Britain team in the M50 4 x 400m relay. When these championships were held at Brighton’s Withdean Stadium in 1984 Tony was a great form, or he may have been acting as a starter, and he qualified for the final of the M40 200m but was injured between the semi-final and the final and had to withdraw.
All this time he kept juggling competing with his starting, until retiring from general competition in 1990, which was a considerable loss to the Worthing League teams.
Tony had been engaged in committee work for many years for the Worthing & District Harriers and the County Association and has twice President of the Worthing Club. In 2008 he became the fifth starter to become the President of the Sussex County Athletics Association, a post he held for two years. Ironically Tony is not a show-off but rather a quiet and thoughtful kind of person, despite having a job as a Panel beater and Welder, and maybe this accounts for his services always being in demand.
When major meetings are held at Sussex venues, and there have been many, the leading officials are appointed nationally but he was in charge when the British Universities Championships were held at Withdean in 1973. From the end of March to the end of September it is not unusual for Tony to be on duty, mostly in Sussex every weekend both Saturday and Sunday, frequently with Jim Boyce (Crawley) and normally attending at least one, and sometimes three meetings, during the week.
In recent years he has been sought after to start at meetings in Hampshire also. Tony did start at the Navy versus the Army Multi-Events championships at the Pitt Street Ground at Portsmouth in 2017 and for six years started the Disabled Games at Eastbourne. He also has frequent calls for his services in the London area, ma
ny of which he has to decline, but he has undertaken several meetings at the Crystal Palace.
There is no question of Tony putting up his feet during the winter as he is always on hand at the Sussex Cross-country League and Sussex Cross-country championships as well as the Sussex Schools championships.
For the past twenty-five years he has been an amazing Sussex starter and is frustrated that the current pandemic situation is preventing holding most athletics meetings and cannot wait until he can regularly start athletic meetings again.