A FORMER York race walking champion and pub landlord has died - apparently the latest victim of the city's asbestos timebomb.

Terry Mercer regularly hit the back page headlines in the then Yorkshire Evening Press in the 1960s and 1970s, said his son David.

"He was always winning trophies in the working men's clubs race walking championships, which were really big in those days," he said.

He later went on to become the landlord at the Harts Horns pub in Silver Street, Knaresborough, where he became president of the Harrogate and Knaresborough licensed victuallers association (LVA).

He then moved back to York, taking over at the Bootham Tavern in the city in the early 1990s.

But David said his father now looked to have paid the price for his much earlier career working as a fitter in the 1950s and 1960s at York Carriageworks, a time when workers are known to have been were widely exposed to deadly asbestos dust.

"I have heard that they used to throw it (the asbestos) around like snowballs and sit on it," he said.

Many scores of former employees have died over the decades of the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma, and David said it now strongly appeared that his father had also fallen victim.

He said he had developed breathing problems in recent times, from which he had died at a York care home.

Tests were now awaited to prove doctors' suspicions that he had mesothelioma and an inquest would be held into his death.

Mr Mercer had three sons, David, Andrew and Stuart, the latter of whom who died last year, and two brothers, Tony and Keith.

His funeral was on Friday at York Crematorium, when a collection was held for York Against Cancer.