Last year David Willis (West, 1954-59) was put on a “Fit for Life” course by his GP to help reduce hypertension from which he suffered. Amongst the choice of sports he could take was “cardio-boxing” at the Surrey Sports Park. On his first visit, he checked-in to say he was there for boxing and was directed to Studio A. He noticed all his fellow boxers were considerably younger than himself but he managed 40 minutes of punch bags and sparring and 10 minutes of head-protected rounds, surprisingly winning each round. He had not put on boxing gloves since leaving prep. school 60 years ago!
On his return to the sports park the following week he was advised that he had wrongly gone to the University of Surrey Boxing Club whereas he should have gone to the GP referral class for cardiac patients! Encouraged by his experience, David joined the ABA Vets and was asked to represent Surrey in a country-wide knock-out competition for “Fit for Life” participants. He managed to get to the quarter finals facing five opponents the oldest of whom was seven years younger than him. Despite having played a four hour game of golf in the morning, he beat all five opponents – three on points and two on submissions. The semi-finals took place on the same day as the Over 70s Reunion at school from which he had to withdraw in order to face three other semi-finalists. The competition looked keen, lean, fit and a lot younger than his 73 years. David won two of his fights but lost on aggregate points to a 61 year old Chinese gentleman from London.
David’s wife, Celia, hopes the experience will have knocked some sense into him but he doubts it and questions whether he had any in the first place!