Robbie Phelps

As a teenager Robert Phelps was a leading junior swimmer and water polo player who won many local Cheltenham and Gloucestershire County swimming titles. He was introduced to the modern pentathlon in 1959, however, by the Hungarian Josef Buszco, who had fled to Britain after the 1956 Soviet invasion.

In 1964 Phelps had the distinction of becoming the first civilian to represent Great Britain in the modern pentathlon at the Olympic Games. A member of the Cheltenham Modern Pentathlon Club at the time, he went on to compete in two more Olympics (1968 and 1972) and was also a regular at the World Championships at that time and captained the Great Britain team at the Melbourne Worlds in 1966. Despite being a civilian, Phelps was invited to take part in the 1964 BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) Championship as a guest just before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. He not only won the event but also became the first British modern pentathlete to score 1,000 points in each of the five disciplines.

In the 1960s Phelps was a scrap metal dealer and, with his older brother John, established the Gloucestershire iron and metal recycling company, which eventually became known as Phelps Brothers. John´s son, the four-time Olympic and 1988 bronze medallist Richard Phelps, was also a director of the company. The siblings also founded the Spartan Modern Pentathlon Club where Robert later coached his nephew, Richard. He also coached another Olympian, Graham Brookhouse. For his services to modern pentathlon, Robert Phelps was awarded the MBE in 1981, and in 1984 was appointed coach to the Great Britain Olympic modern pentathlon team.