Friday 9 May.

One of our members over ninety years ago was one Alfred Leslie Porter. He was born in Pimlico around 1900 but by 1911 his family had moved to Clapham and it is likely that he worked at Prices Candle Factory in Battersea where a strong athletics team had close affinities with Belgrave Harriers.  As a nineteen year-old he joined Belgrave Harriers and was a precocious talent for he was soon scoring in our South of Thames CC teams, the 'Southern' CC Champs, and was almost immediately made cross country captain. By 1920 he was serving on the club's committee and even became Assistant Secretary for a while before stepping down as it interfered with his training. Also in 1920 he ran in our incomplete team on the very first occasion that Belgrave entered the National Cross Country Championships. He had a hand in our initial affiliation to Surrey County Athletics Association and in the procuring of a new die for our club medals - the design of which remained the same thereafter right up to today. But what happened to this young man, blazing a trail in our club, for by 1922 he had disappeared.

The answer came to us recently when an enquirer from the other side of the Atlantic wondered whether the 'A.L. Porter' listed on our website might be his granddad. Indeed he was. It seems that our young Belgravian from the early 1920s emigrated to the USA.

But that talent for running was carried down the generations and today a young man in California, Ross Monroe, proudly wears the colours of the club of his great-grandfather when turning out for races.