The Press sports reporter DAVE FLETT hears of York swimmer Peter Kendrew’s party parade in Tokyo.

GATECRASHING Joe Frazier’s gold-medal winning celebration party is just one of the great memories 1964 Olympian Peter Kendrew cherishes from the Tokyo Games.

Kendrew, now 72, was a member of the Great Britain 100 metres freestyle swimming relay team that finished sixth in Japan as the five-ringed extravaganza was staged in Asia for the first time.

Future world heavyweight champion Smokin’ Joe, meanwhile, was busy winning boxing gold before going on to find further fame by beating the legendary Muhammad Ali as a professional.

Frazier’s triumph was one of the highlights in Japan and Kendrew still recalls sharing in the American icon’s moment of glory.

The former York City Baths Club ace said: “When you are staying in the Olympic village, you see everybody that’s anybody in sport. In Tokyo, each country had specific dining areas but a group of us started trying to sneak in to eat with other nations.

“We went into the American one on the night Joe Frazier won his gold medal and ended up on the next table to him. He came in with the other boxers and a big cake, which they started dividing up.

“We didn’t get a piece but it was great to sit in on his celebrations.”

Kendrew made the team destined for the land of the rising sun after missing out on a place at the Rome Games four years earlier when a poorly-timed tumble turn cost him dearly despite being the fastest 100m swimmer in the country at the time.

“I somersaulted too early and missed the wall in the trials so I didn’t get there,” he recalled. “I’d been looking forward to Rome so much and had already swam in the Olympic pool a few months earlier when they were testing it during an eight-nation contest but I never got to swim in it again.”

Initially, Kendrew – who represented his country at the 1958 and 1962 Commonwealth Games in Cardiff and Perth respectively – was also overlooked for Tokyo selection in controversial circumstances after finishing in a qualifying place at the trials.

He went on holiday to Italy in an attempt to recover from another crushing blow only to learn he was now wanted by the team from another English family staying in the same hotel who recognised him from a newspaper report.

“The trials in those days were open to anybody and, in the final for Tokyo, there were four foreigners and four Brits, so we all assumed we would be in the team for the Games wherever we finished,” Kendrew added.

“But, that evening, when the selectors made their announcement, I wasn’t picked. They had named a lad from Southampton called Dave Haller in my place.

“He hadn’t even made the final so I was devastated because I was more than a second faster than him at the trials. He was supposed to have broken the British record but nobody seemed to have seen that and he never swam anywhere near it in national competitions.

“Maybe he did it off a running start but, anyway, I thought that was it for me and went off on holiday to Italy. But then, we were in the back room of our small hotel and there was a family on the next table, who were from Blackheath.

“By coincidence, I had just been stationed there for the Olympic trials at Crystal Palace so we struck up a conversation. The next day they read that my coach was looking for me.

“There was a story saying more money had been raised for the Olympic team and three more swimmers had been called up to the squad with me being one of them. There had been a bit of an outcry back at home with people claiming I had been badly treated and I ended up in the freestyle relay team.

“If we had not been talking the night before, I might never have found out until we got home. As it happened, in those days, I couldn’t really get in touch anyway but, when we returned to England, I had a week’s training in London before going to Tokyo.”

Kendrew was a member of the same GB swimming team as York-born Anita Lonsbrough, whose gold medal in Rome four years earlier was the last won by a female swimmer from this country until Rebecca Adlington’s double-winning triumph at the 2008 Beijing Games.

Others swimmers from the Minster city to earn Olympic recognition are Pauline Musgrave (1952), Amanda Radnage (1972), Kevin Burns (1976), Caroline Foot (1988), who also went on to captain the women’s team in Atlanta eight years later, and Robin Francis (2004).