Lesser Known Athletes Who Have Represented Devon on the World Stage
There are plenty of famous sports people who have made it to the big leagues in their chosen profession that have either roots in Devo. As you would expect, nearly all of the biggest names on this list are professional footballers, and they include Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins, Chelsea’s Ethan Ampadu, and Watford’s Dan Gosling.
Over the decades, there have been many Devonian sports legends that have gone down in history for doing something particularly special. One of the most-cited examples is Trevor Francis, a former England player who scored the winning goal for Nottingham Forest against Malmö in the 1979 European Cup final and then followed that up with a second victory in the tournament the following year.
There’s much more to Devon than just football though. In fact, the county has gifted us with some of the most talent British players in just about every sport. However, they sometimes fly under the radar.
So let’s change that, here are some lesser known athletes that have represented Devon on the world stage.
Marcus Wyatt
Marcus ‘Goose’ Wyatt was born in the market town of Honiton, Devon. He has represented the UK in the Skeleton World Cup since 2017 and took part in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing for Team GB where he finished 16th.
The 2022-23 skeleton season has been his best of his career. He started out with victory in the first race in Whistler, Canada, followed by a third at Park City, USA. Wyatt ended the season in February with a second place, to finish third over all.
He also represented Great Britain in the Skeleton World Championships this year, as he has done since 2019. This year’s event, which was hosted in Mortiz, Switzerland, saw Wyatt finished 5th, his highest position in the competition.
Jeraint Hazan
Poker has really taken off as a sport over the last 20 years or so, thanks to online card rooms. These are websites and apps that allow people to compete with each other online in games like Texas hold’em, razz, and five-card draw. In addition to this, some of these platforms also offer educational content to their users, allowing them to learn how games work while they find their feet.
Some of these online players eventually progress into live tournaments where they compete to win all of the chips from the other competitors. One such player is Jeraint ‘JJ’ Hazan, a Devononian who now lives in London.
JJ is a man of many talents, describing himself as an “actor with a passion for poker and cricket” on his Twitter profile. His passion has certainly served him well ove the years as he’s travelled the world to compete in tournaments in 10 different countries, including both the United States of America and Australia.
He saw his biggest success early in his career, finishing second in the LIDO Dutch Open and first in the UK Poker Tour. JJ has won several other tournaments over the years, though his biggest cash finish was the LIDO event.
Adam Holland
Adam ‘Tango’ Holland was born in Plymouth, Devon and is one of the city’s and the county’s most successful athletes. As a member of the Tavistock running club, he’s been breaking records his entire professional career and has won more than 300 marathons and ultra-marathons over that time.
In 2005, aged 18, Holland competed in his first full marathon in Abingdon, finishing with a time of three hours and 36 minutes, following this up with a few more events in 2006 and 2007.
However, he took his running to the next level in 2008, running 25 full marathons in a single year and then doing more than 30 each year after that. By 2010, aged just 23, Holland became the youngest person to run 100 marathons in Europe.
In 2016, the Devonian broke another record, smashing the cumulative time to complete 10 marathons in as many days. Not satisfied with that, he then beat his own record the following year.
As of 2023, Holland is the most successful marathon and ultra-marathon runner in the whole of Great Britain and is the fourth-best in the world.
