Steffen Cranmer

At the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Steffen Cranmer became the youngest ever British competitor in an Olympic shooting event at the age of 18 years 82 days. Through the 2020 Tokyo Games, that record still stood. His youth enabled Cranmer to go on to enjoy a long Olympic career that also included the 1956 Melbourne and 1960 Rome Games. His best finish was 18th in the 1956 Free Rifle, Three Positions, 300 metres. His finest achievements, however, came at the 1958 Moskva World Championships, when he won a team gold medal in the 50 metres small-bore rifle prone and a bronze in the 50 + 100 metres free rifle prone team event.

Cranmer’s father Roy was a city of London businessman and a former England and Great Britain shooting international. He introduced Steffen to air rife shooting at the age of four and the father and son pair were soon seen shooting together at the Ham and Petersham Rifle Club. Steffen won the first of three consecutive British Junior Rifle titles in 1950.

At the time of the Helsinki Olympics, Cranmer was still at school at Whitgift School, Croydon. His application to join the Royal Air Force (RAF) was rejected because he had a defective left eye. Fortunately he used his right eye when sighting to shoot. Shortly after the Helsinki Games, Cranmer joined the Royal Ordnance Corps as a cadet.

Cranmer became a regional sales manager with the internationally known firm of JCB Excavators. In 1973 he was moved to his city of birth, København (Copenhagen), where the company opened a new regional sales office to oversee sales and servicing of machines in Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Norway, and Finland. Cranmer’s Air hostess-wife Yvonne became the British European Airways (BEA) poster girl in the 1960s.