Percy Cockings

Percy Cockings won the featherweight title at the German Gymnastic Society Annual Championships in 1906 and 1908, and was runner-up to John Slim of Hammersmith in the 1907 final. Cockings was called up by the Great Britain team for the freestyle featherweight competition at the 1908 London Olympics and four years later went to Stockholm to compete in the Greco-Roman event at the same weight. He went to the 1912 Olympics having won the National Amateur Wrestling Association’s (NAWA) English featherweight title three years in succession, 1910-12. He added a fourth consecutive title in 1913.

Cocking served with the Army Service Corps and, within a week of signing-up in August 1914, was posted to France, and later Belgium. Originally a private, he was promoted to acting sergeant in 1916. Cockings was mentioned in dispatches in 1919 and received the British War and Victory Medals, and the 1914 Star. After the War, he relocated from the London area to Southport where he worked as a motor mechanic. He died in the north-west seaside town in 1963.