Bobby McGregor

The achievements and records of Bobby McGregor confirm him as one of the best freestyle swimmers produced by Scotland and Great Britain as he became one of the world´s great swimmers in the 1960s. His achievements were more remarkable because he trained in a 25-yard public pool. As a youngster, McGregor was more interested in angling and football and always wanted to be a footballer. His father David, however, a former Olympic water polo player who played for the successful Motherwell team, had other ideas for his son.

The young McGregor started swimming at the age of nine at the Falkirk baths where his father was the manager. McGregor won the Scotland boys freestyle title at the age of 16 (just as his father had done 35 years earlier), and he went on to win countless Scottish titles and set multiple records. McGregor also made his Scotland début at the age of 16. McGregor broke the world 110 yards freestyle record in an international against Sweden at Blackpool in 1963 when he knocked 7/10ths of a second off John Devitt´s four-year-old record with a time of 54.4. He later reduced it to 53.6 a few weeks before the 1964 Olympics. At the 1966 ASA Championship McGregor cut the record further to 53.3. McGregor won eight ASA titles at ether 110- or 220-yards freestyle between 1962-68. It could have been more had he not taken a year away from many leading events in 1965 to concentrate on his studies as an architectural student at Strathclyde University, having previously attended Falkirk High School.

Success came on the international stage, the first being at the Leipzig European Championships in 1962 when McGregor won silver in the 4×100 m freestyle relay. A few months later he went to Perth, Australia, for the British Empire and Commonwealth Games, having first thought the Games were “just down the road” at Perth, in his native Scotland. Once on the other side of the world, however, McGregor won silver in the 110 yards freestyle. Four years later at Kingston, Jamaica, he won a second silver and at that year´s Europeans, he went one better and won gold in the individual 100 metres freestyle.

McGregor went to the 1964 Tokyo and 1968 Mexico Olympics and reached five finals out of the eight events he contested. He won one silver medal, but it was close to gold. As captain of the British swimming team in Tokyo. McGregor qualified for the 100 freestyle final as one of the favourites after winning both his heat and semi-final. In the final he peaked just a few yards too early and a late surge by Don Schollander saw the American win by inches as he won the first of four golds to become the first swimmer to win four golds at one Games, and the first American to win four golds at the same Olympics since athlete Jesse Owens in 1936. McGregor returned to Tokyo for the 1967 Universiade and won silver in the 100 freestyle, and two freestyle relay silvers, as well as a bronze in the 4x100 medley relay.

McGregor, who was honoured with the MBE in 1967 for his services to swimming, retired from international competition after the 1968 Mexico Olympics and concentrated on his job as a partner in a firm of Glasgow architects. He was one if the first inductees into the Scottish Sports Hall if Fame in 2002. After the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, at a luncheon at Buckingham Palace, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II told McGregor that she had watched his final and said: “If you´d had a longer finger, you would have won.”