Australian Honours

With the awarding of an OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia) to Simon Baker in the 2018 Australia Day Honours List, I decided it was time to acknowledge the members of our Australian racewalking community who have received this or similar honours, in specific recognition of their work within our sport. After a bit of research, my list reads as shown below.

I have used the Australian Honours search facility (https://honours.pmc.gov.au/honours/search) to aid in this process.

Please let me know of any omissions.

Date	Name	State	Honour	Citation
14-Jun-1975	Mabel Robinson	VIC	MBE	Sport
1-Jan-1982	Frank McGuire	VIC	BEM	For Service to Athletics
1-Jan-1982	Augustus (Gus) Theobald	VIC	BEM	For Service to Athletics
26-Jan-1992	Kerry Saxby	ACT	OAM	For Service to Athletics
26-Jan-1992	Denis Wilson	ACT	AM	For Service to Athletics
26-Jan-1998	Marion Patterson	VIC	OAM	For Service to Athletics in particular Race Walking, Through the Victorian Women's Amateur Athletic Association and Athletics Australia
14-Jun-1999	Ron Crawford	NSW	OAM	For Services to Athletics as a Competitor and Administrator
11-Jun-2012	Wayne Fletcher	TAS	OAM	For service to the sport of athletics
26-Jan-2014	Tim Erickson	VIC	OAM	For services to race walking
13-Jun-2016	Jared Tallent	SA	OAM	For service to sport as a gold medallist at the 2012 London Olympic Games
26-Jan-2018	Simon Baker	VIC	OAM	For service to athletics, particularly to racewalking
14-Jun-2021	Harold Summers	VIC	OAM	For service to athletics
26-Jan-2021	Robert (Bob) Cruise	SA	OAM	For service to athletics
13-Jun-2022	Heather Mitchell	NSW	OAM	For service to athletics
26-Jan-2024	Heather Carr	VIC	OAM	For service to athletics
26-Jan-2024	Lynne Schickert	WA	AM	For service to athletics

Of course, members of our Australian racewalking community have been similarly honoured over the years with awards recognising their work in other areas. It would be an impossible task to gather all those names here, but here are some who spring to mind

Date	Name	State	Honour	Citation
25-May-1962	Victor Bradley Sharp	SA	MBE	MBE - Military Division - Australian Military Forces Acting Flight Lieutenant Victor Bradley Sharp (042016), Air Training Corps Reserve For services to the Australian Armed Forces
8-June-2015	Denis William Strangman	ACT	AM	For significant service to community health through advocacy, public policy, and support organisations for people with brain tumours
26-Jan-2016	John Gavan Breen	NT	AO	For distinguished service to the Indigenous community through the preservation of languages, to the development of orthographies, and to education
26-Jan-2019	Stuart Kollmorgen	VIC	OAM	For service to the community

This also seems a good place to recognise those Australians who have held high positions internationally within the racewalking community.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the IAAF in 2012, Irish judge/administrator/historian Pierce O'Callaghan published a document detailing past and current (at that time) members of the IAAF and EAA Race Walk Committees and listing past Olympic, World Championships and Race Walking World Cup judges. Luckily the document can still be sourced from the Swiss Racewalking website at http://www.swisswalking.org/data/federation/reglements/PDF/IAAF_RWC2013_Olympic_World_Champs_Judges.pdf. I have extracted out the Australians listed therein, up to and including 2012, and then added those that I know, post 2012.

IAAF Race Walking Committee	1968-1972, 1976-1981	Vic Sharp (SA)
	1984-1987	Ray Smith (VIC)
	1995-2003	Bob Cruise (SA)
	? - 2019	Jane Saville (NSW)
Olympic Judges (1924-2021)	1956	J. J. Cummings, M. Moroney, J. A. Larkin (VICs)
	1960	Frank McGuire (VIC)
	1964, 1968, 1972, 1976	Vic Sharp (SA)
	1980, 1988	Ray Smith (VIC)
	2000, 2004	Bob Cruise (SA)
	2008	Wayne Fletcher (TAS)
	2021	Zoe Eastwood-Bryson (SA)
IAAF World Championship Judges	1983	Vic Sharp (SA)
	1987	Ray Smith (VIC)
	1991, 1999, 2005	Jill Huxley (NSW)
	1997	Marion Patterson (VIC)
	2007, 2009	Wayne Fletcher (TAS)
	2015, 2023	Zoë Eastwood-Bryson (SA)
	2019, 2022	Kirsten Crocker (NSW)
IAAF World Cup Judges (1987-2012)	1987, 1991	Ray Smith (VIC)
	1997, 2004, 2010	Jill Huxley (NSW)
	1999, 2006	Bob Cruise (SA)
	2002, 2012	Wayne Fletcher (TAS)
	2016	Kirsten Crocker (NSW)
	2018, 2022	Zoë Eastwood-Bryson (SA)

Last updated: Tim Erickson, 26 January 2024

The Victorian Race Walking Club

VRWC Specific Pages

The Rules of Racewalking

Records Records Records

Supporting the 50km

Other Pages

VRWC Results

Other Walking Sites

Australian Honours