Norman Pritchard

 Norman Pritchard

Will the real Norman Pritchard please stand up? No way. For years he has been dead and buried. Ignored and forgotten for ages.

Pritchard’s name and fame rests on a tiny piece of statistic. He is credited to have won the silver medal in 200 metres sprint and in 200 metres hurdles more than a century ago in the Olympic Games at Paris in 1900.

Then, what is his relevance today? Plenty. He happens to be the first Indian to win an Olympic medal.

 Most unfortunately Norman Pritchard’s qualification of being from India is being questioned. Initially, the Olympic records acknowledged that Norman Pritchard represented India at the Paris Olympic in 1900. By that reasoning he becomes India’s first medal winner at the Olympics.

But recently Olympic authorities are unwilling to pass on the credit to India as they feel that Pritchard should be considered a British athlete as his parents were from England.

Since Pritchard’s life has never been properly documented there is good reason to feel that the son of English parents should be considered to have represented England. But at the same time let there be no doubt that whatever little information is available about Norman Pritchard points to the fact that he was a Calcutta-based man since birth.

Born in Alipore, then an exclusively British part of Calcutta, Pritchard studied at St.Xavier’s Collegiate School in Calcutta. Sports researcher Gulu Ezekiel has discovered that he stayed at Lansdowne Road (now Sarat Bose Road) and worked for Bird & Co, both at Calcutta.

There is no doubt that while at the Paris Olympic, Norman Pritchard was very much a Calcutta lad. Pritchard excelled both at football and rugby. A popular man, he was also the secretary of Calcutta Football Club (CFC, now CC&FC). He also became the secretary of Indian Football Association (IFA). Hence to regard a man, who was born at Calcutta and spent all his active years in India, an England representative at the Olympic Games is grossly unfair.

With such strong recommendations to back his candidature as an Indian representative, it is indeed rather surprising that he is recently being dragged away from India under extremely unpalatable circumstances. The trail of Norman Pritchard was lost during the 1^st world war. It became impossible to trace the latter part of the life of the outstanding athlete and prominent sports administrator.

About ten years ago while researching at the Goethall’s Library of St Xavier’s College, Calcutta, I came across a newspaper cutting mentioning that Norman Pritchard had gone across to United States and settled down. This piece of information helped in getting to know the actual fate of the great athlete from Calcutta. In the US, the athlete Norman Pritchard became a movie actor! He was an extremely popular star and acted in numerous films under the name of Norman Trevor. Unfortunately he led a reckless life and died in penury. He has been forgotten ever since.

The late lamented Reverend Cecil Leeming, a priest of English parentage at Calcutta St.Xavier’s, who was good enough an athlete himself to be called for the 1936 Berlin Olympic trials, always maintained that although Pritchard had British parents, he was an inspiration to a generation of Calcutta athletes and would never have considered himself to be anything but a ‘pucca’ Bengali.

In 1900 the Olympics at Paris coincided with the international exhibition at Paris at the time and had stretched over many a month. Those days at the Olympics the question of nationality did not arise because there were no official Olympic committees of individual countries and that the participants participated on their own.

Pritchard went to the Paris Olympic in 1900 on his own. He was sent neither by India nor by Britain. Hence Pritchard’s two silver medals remain his very own. Since he was born and   bred   in Calcutta, there is no earthly reason to think that he went to Paris as an England representative.

If Pritchard is now considered to be an England athlete, then what would be the status of cricketer Ranjitsinghji? Ranji was not born in England nor did he have English parentage. Yet, based in England, he represented England. India accepted that he was an England cricketer by residential qualification.

If Ranji is considered an England cricketer by residential qualification, then Pritchard most certainly would qualify to be an athlete representing India for the very same reason. Let sanity be restored. Norman Pritchard, the Calcutta lad, is India’s first medallist at the Olympic Games.

In this year of Olympic Games, let all genuine sports lovers not forget the name of the man who first brought laurels to India at the Olympic Games.