Highland Games athlete

Born: March 2, 1929;

Died: July 23, 2017

HENRY Alexander Gray, known as Sandy, who has died aged 88, was one of Scotland’s leading Highland Games heavy events athletes for 25 years from 1950 onwards and thereafter a familiar and extremely popular figure on the Games circuit as an official for another 40 years.

Immediately recognisable due to his impressive physique – he was 6’ 5” tall and tipped the scales at 19 stones – he was inordinately strong thanks in part to his genes but also because of his lifelong work as a farmer at East Eninteer in the parish of Leochel Cushnie, near Alford, where he was born and died.

In 1954 he enjoyed his greatest success when he won the coveted Scottish Heavy Events Championship at Crieff Games. Throughout the ‘50s, ‘60s and into the ‘70s he figured prominently in prize lists and set records at games throughout the country. He became only the second man ever to toss the famous Braemar caber after the great George Clark and did so five years in succession, each time earning the special £10 prize for the feat which prompted an official to remark to him, "If you keep daein’ this Sandy, ye’ll ha’e the Games ruined!”

His specialities were the real strongman events such as the caber, the heavy hammer and the weights for height and distance, at all of which he excelled. At Aboyne Games where he won the champion heavy title several times, he won the caber on nine occasions, including seven

years consecutively and placed in the event every year between 1951 and 1974. All of this was achieved without his ever having done weight training and on a minimum of specific events training causing many to speculate as to what greater heights he was capable of.

His easy going and affable nature probably militated against the single minded pursuit of success but there is little doubt had he dedicated himself he would have figured among the greatest ever of Scottish heavies alongside Donald Dinnie, AA Cameron, Clark and Bill Anderson, widely acknowledged as the best of all and particularly by Gray himself.

Gray's exceptional strength was demonstrated in 1953 when he took part in a contest in Aberdeen’s Music Hall to walk 20 yards across the stage while carrying one of the famous Dinnie Stones, which weighed 340lb, for a £20 prize. These stones had reputedly been carried by Dinnie across the Potarch Bridge in 1860 to assist his stonemason father working there. Straddling the stone while lifting it, Gray reached the 18 yard mark but could go no further and was denied the prize. But the crowd protested so strongly the organisers had to relent and award him the £20. On another occasion his enormously strong grip came to the fore when he became one of the few to lift single handed the famous Thomas Inch dumbbell, which weighed 172 lbs..

In 1967 he travelled to Canada to take part in the Nova Scotia Centennial Highland Games at the Wanderers’ Grounds in Halifax, as part of the country’s centenary celebrations, where unusually the caber was tossed for distance as opposed to being

turned on its end. During the week he spent there he also took part in exhibition events and proved an excellent ambassador.

He was renowned for his ability at the 56lb weight over the bar event in which he held the Braemar record at 15’6”, the games’ annual once describing his prowess as follows: "With spectacular diffidence, he approaches the bar, throws and turns away almost shyly, all in one easy movement, one of the most impressive sights in the Ggmes.”

Born the third of five children to James and Isabella, Gray became the sixth generation of his family to farm East Eninteer. He attended the local Cushnie school and was happy to leave at 14 to work on the family farm.

Along with his brother Norman and father, he slept in the bothy and enjoyed a happy upbringing. For amusement he and his brother would throw the Scots hammer and weights about the farm leading to his taking part in 1947 in the sports at the Craigievar Estate annual picnic. Success there was followed by competing at local games at Kennethmont, Wartle, Keig and Tarland before making his debut at Aboyne in 1949. Overawed by the crowd, he did not do well, not helped by overhearing someone in the crowd remark "that yin will never mak’ a thrower". But George Clark spotted his potential and after receiving assistance from him he won his first prizes at Aboyne in 1950 and continued doing so there and at many venues till 1974.

His link with the heavy events then continued till a few years ago as judge at Braemar, Aboyne and other Grampian games. In 2006 he was very proud to have been presented to the Royal family at Braemar, a photo of which sat prominently in his farmhouse. In 1964 he married Mary Murray in Banchory and together they enjoyed a very happy marriage until her death in 2001.

JACK DAVIDSON