Ray Jones

Geelong’s first Olympian was Ray Jones, a boxer at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games. Jones started boxing for fitness, training on the hills and foreshore around Geelong. At the Games in Paris he boxed against America’s Ben Funk in the first round, losing in a points decision. Stories passed down from Jones recall the Paris boxing tournament event was rather rushed and Jones didn’t enter the ring until after midnight. The canvas was slippery casing Jones to fall during the bout.

Jones’ career was as a building surveyor at the Geelong Council and one development he was involved with was the Eastern Beach in Geelong. He sadly passed away in Melbourne on the morning of the wedding of his son, Ray to Sonja, on 14 February 1976. He had in previous years suffered a stroke.

His son Ray Jones became a leading Australian Modernist architect. In the 1950s he submitted an unsuccessful design for the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Park Swimming and Diving Stadium. The design, by Jones, 50 years later inspired an Australian award-winning design of the Beijing National Aquatics Centre Olympic venue popularly known as the Water Cube.