NEXT year will mark the 100th anniversary of Warrington Athletic Club’s Chris Vose captaining the GB Olympic cross country team to silver medals at the 1920 Antwerp Games.

Geoff Settle, former chair, attended the last race in the ‘Nev Jones’ Warrington Schools Cross Country League series for 2019 at Walton Hall to present a framed photograph of Warrington athletes featuring Chis Vose taken almost 100 years ago.

The picture had been rescued from the old wooden grandstand in Victoria Park that was damaged in a fire many years ago.

It was given to Geoff by Dave Cotterill, WBC environment service manager to see what he could do with it.

Dave said: “I can recall how lucky we were to retrieve the photo from the grandstand fire and am really pleased that the photo has been restored."

Geoff had taken the old photograph that was slightly burnt to Picturesq in Latchford where they worked their magic to restore the photograph and set it in club colours.

Geoff said: “It gave me great pleasure to return and present the wonderfully framed photograph of Chris Vose and members of the 1920 WAC cross-country team to my club.

“Chatting with coach Jim Russell about the photo we believe that Chris is the moustached gentleman who brought fame to the club as an Olympic athlete 100 years ago.”

Chris Vose was born in Preston in 1887.

He made Warrington his home and lived until the age of 87.

His most famous achievement was captaining the silver medal GB cross country team at the 1920 Antwerp Olympic Games where he finished fourth counter.

Unfortunately, only the first three in the team got Olympic medals.

However, he was a member of five winning England teams in the International Cross-Country championships in 1911-13 and 1920-21with a best individual placing of second in 1920.

Geoff added: "It was great to catch a couple of the races named in memory of Neville Jones. Nev worked harder than anyone I know at coaching over the decades, athletics and WAC was his life.

“No doubt many of the youngsters running today will have been coached by Nev and I hope that they will continue being inspired by his memory and carry on achieving many more great performances in the future.”