50 years since our founder and managing director, BARRY WILLIAMS, became an OLYMPIAN
6 September 2022
Category: General

September 2022 marks 50 years since our founder and managing director, BARRY WILLIAMS, became an OLYMPIAN, competing at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.
A naturally gifted athlete, Barry developed a flair as a hammer thrower whilst growing up in the Wirral, a talent that would see him travel the world, competing at the highest levels.
He became an all-England schools hammer championship winner, an AAA junior champion and Bronze medal winner at the 1970 Commonwealth Games.
Helped by a strict training regime and a high calorie diet, which included over two and a half litres of milk each day, Barry’s path to the 1972 Olympics saw him set a new English record.
Barry proudly went on to represent Great Britain as their only field event finalist at the Munich games. He finished a very respectable 16th from almost 50 entrants, no mean feat in an era where Eastern European athletes dominated the field.
The following year saw Barry continue to compete at the top level, setting new Commonwealth and British records amongst his accomplishments.


Following his retirement from athletics, Barry established a business building garden sheds.
Although a world away from the athletics field, this wasn’t to be the last of his ‘Olympian’ days, as special dispensation allowed Barry to use his Olympian status in the title, and so Olympian Sheds was born.
As with everything that Barry turns his hand to, his perseverance and determination to succeed has seen the company go from strength to strength.
In its 39th year of trading, and known now as Olympian Garden Buildings, the company is run by Barry, wife Julie and their children Nick and Hannah, and is the leading manufacturer of garden buildings in Cheshire and the North West.
“We’re very proud, not everyone can claim their dad is an Olympian! He approaches everything he does with the same determination to succeed, and hopefully we have inherited that drive and ambition. It’s great to be able to share this special anniversary with him“, says son, Nick.
Each year, Olympians world-wide mark the anniversary of the Olympic Games with special ceremonies and events held to celebrate their momentous achievements.
Barry will use this 50th anniversary as an opportunity to look back and reflect on his illustrious athletics career whilst remembering the tragic events that also unfolded during the Munich Olympics.
Two days prior to competing, a terrorist group attacked the Olympic Village, killing 10 Israeli athletes and a German policeman.
Barry talks poignantly of his experience, “I walked into the Olympic Stadium for the first final after the Massacre; this sense of pride and history has never left me.”
From the Olympic Games to Olympian Garden Buildings, Barry continues to prove that once an Olympian, always an Olympian!


