While the London Hammer School in its current form is realtively new, the roots & origins of the club reach back a long way. We are proud to have worked with many great throwers and a few of the great coaches that have helped mould modern hammer throwing.

In the beginning - the Alan Bertram years

The roots of the London Hammer School reach back almost 50 years. The West London Hammer School was founded in 1977 by the well-renowned and well-respected hammer thrower and coach Alan Bertram. The purpose of the hammer school was to find good talent, nurture it and train it to a high standard. One of its first members went on to become an Olympic and Commonwealth hammer thrower.

Before he retired in 2003 (he was a Chief Inspector in the Met Police) and moved to Scotland, Alan had trained over 70 UK champions in the hammer throw across a range of age groups. This included a gold medals at the 2002 Commonwealth Games won by that early club member Mick Jones.

We are aiming later this year to launch an annual hammer throwing event to honour Alan's memory: he passed away in 2014 - this will be something like the Alan Bertram Memorial Long Throws.

Alan receiving his lifetime achievement award from Scottish Athletics

Making the Hammer School

In 2024 we launched the London Hammer School with a wider vision to that of the previous “West London Hammer School” with the aim to set up satellite centres in and around the London area with a base in North London at the Lee Valley Athletics Centre, and also at Perivale in LB of Ealing, at the Bannister stadium in Harrow, and Braintree in Essex. These are locations so far but we are keen to add more.

This will be achieved by running coaching sessions with athletes at whatever club they attend and at what level they have reached in their throwing. Where necessary, we aim to provide any additonal equipment needed to achieve the set training session. This will help support clubs, coaches and, of course the athlete. We believe that working together with the vision of supporting the athlete is a strong way forward not only for the development of hammer throwing but also the club and competitions.

Expansion years

In the past these objectives were achieved under the West London Hammer School banner and we operated just from one facility, Ealing. We managed to develop athletes coming from schools, clubs and from overseas. We created a training group comprising athletes from the UK as well as New Zealand, Nigeria and France. Using this hub in Ealing as our base, we invited athletes and coaches from other clubs in west London to participate in regional training days, to develop coaching skills and techniques for all to share knowledge and experience.

Yuri Sedyhk

Following on from this we organised, on several occasions, masterclasses with the men's hammer world record holder, the late Yuri Sedykh who came to Ealing and delivered coaching sessions with ALL athletes from beginner, to intermediate and advanced. Yuri's amazing world record of 86.74m was set in 1986, at the European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany. It remains the longest-standing ratified world record in men's track and field athletics.

Everyone was welcome to be coached by the very best, in which our head coach Jamie also developed his training, mentoring and coaching skills.


Yuri running a coaching session


Yuri trying to break his own hammer world record on Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games on the Nintendo Wii

Where we are today

We are now a fully affiliated club with England Athletics and from this point we aim to grow in all areas: more members, more clubs with which we are connected, more coaches with whom we work, to organise more training clinics for athletes & coaches and to organise or support a growing number of hammer (and other long throw) competitions.