Obituary: Alan Bertram MBE, athletics coach and former policeman

Successful athletics coaches require a combination of commitment, patience and understanding of both their event and their pupils. Alan Bertram, who has died in hospital in Edinburgh at the age of 76, had all of these qualities in abundance – and a great deal more.

His warmth, enthusiasm and total dedication to one of the most technically difficult of all the athletics disciplines will make his loss with just over a year to go to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow all the harder to bear for the sport and especially for the throwers he helped reach the qualifying standards.

Yet his legacy will be those very athletes such as Andy Frost and his partner, the Scottish women’s champion Susan McKelvie, the Scottish men’s number one Mark Dry and Chris Bennett who in a remarkable tribute all achieved the Games standards in competitions last Sunday the day after hearing of their  mentor’s death.

These of course were not the first successful athletes Bertram had coached for he steered both Mick Jones and Lorraine Shaw of England to Commonwealth gold in Manchester in 2002 while in 1992 he had guided Jason Byrne of England to a  European Under-23 gold medal.

More recently, Bertram had guided Kimberley Reed to a silver medal in the Commonwealth Youth Games in the Isle of Man in 2011 and Myra Perkins and Irishman Dempsey  McGuigan are two more of his protégés.

Paying tribute to Bertram, Edinburgh Leisure administrator Andy Frost, who was fourth for England in the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games and fourth again for Scotland in Delhi 2010, said: “Just being at his sessions was enjoyable – I learned not only about hammer-throwing but about life as well and his attention to detail was amazing, especially considering he didn’t own a computer and wrote out everything by hand.”

“We all got our programmes which he sent out every month and he also wrote out a copy which he kept.

“He was open to everyone and as happy to have a complete beginner as a Commonwealth champion.”

Although by then not in the best of health Bertram had  insisted in taking his group to Portugal for warm-weather training.

“He had nine of us out in Portugal in April taking double sessions every day, standing for four hours a time,” said Frost, who said Bertram was selfless when it came to cost. “Although he got some help from Scottish Athletics latterly it must have cost him a fortune.”

Few coaches have single-handedly done more to improve the quality and coverage of their discipline and as an organiser he staged countless event-specific competitions which became known as “Hammerama” meetings.

The hammer is not everybody’s favourite event, especially as it can be dangerous and inconvenient to stage but  Bertram fell in love from an early age. Aged 22, it captured his imagination to such a degree that he built his own hammer and circle. It was a basic work ethic that he would later pass on to his athletes, with Crawley athlete Jones winning the Commonwealth title after training on a home-made circle in a farmer’s field.

Born in Northumberland, Bertram moved to London in 1960, joined the Met Police and visited the Rome Olympics. It was a life-changing moment as he sat mesmerised by the exploits of the Soviet Union’s gold medallist Vasiliy Rudenkov.

Despite being Northumberland and Durham hammer champion in 1962, Bertram realised he was not going to make it as a world-class thrower himself, so he devoted himself to creating champions.

In the Met Police, he rose to the ranks of chief inspector, and he was every bit as thorough with his pursuit of athletics excellence as he travelled the world seeking technical advice from the very best.

Among those he sought out was Karl-Hans Riehm, a giant West German who broke the world record multiple times in the 1970s.

Riehm’s coach, Professor Ernst Klement, would soon become Bertram’s mentor.

“It cost thousands of pounds,” Bertram told the Athletics  Weekly magazine in an interview in June 2000. “But it’s been a lot of fun.”

In 2003 Bertram left his West London Hammer School in good hands and moved up to Scotland, settling in Newtown St Boswalls and setting up his Border Reivers Hammer Academy.

“It says it all really that the hammer is probably now one of Scotland’s strongest events,” concluded Frost.

Bertram is survived by his wife Marie. His funeral will take place noon today at the Melrose Parish Church.

Sandy Sutherland