Bill Roycroft

James William George Roycroft, OBE (17 March 1915 – 29 May 2011) was an Australian Olympic equestrian champion. He grew up on a dairy farm and learnt to ride horses there. After serving in the army in World War II, he moved with his family to a soldier's block in western Victoria near Camperdown, where he raised his three sons, all of whom went on to compete alongside their father in the Olympics. At his first Olympics, the 1960 Rome Games, he played a key role on the final day of the team three-day event, despite being thrown off his horse the day before, allowing Australia to win the gold medal in the competition. He went on to compete in four more Olympics from 1964 to 1976, winning bronze medals in team eventing at the 1968 Mexico City and 1976 Montreal Games. He later served as coach of the Australian eventing team.

Biography Roycroft was born as one of seven children on 17 March 1915 in Melbourne and grew up in Flowerdale. His parents ploughed with horses in their dairy farm. Roycroft rode throughout his childhood, racing his horses over tree branches with his friend Lawrence Morgan, later an Olympic equestrian competitor.

At about the age of fourteen he left school and moved with his mother and father's brother to New South Wales, where he was a messenger for the Water Commission in Leeton and later a sharecropper. He then moved back to Flowerdale, where he did odd jobs on local farms while competing in riding. Mavis died on 17 August 2007 at the age of 86.

As part of the Australian team's preparation for the 1960 Rome Olympics, they took part in the Badminton Horse Trials, and Roycroft was the first Australian to win the individual three-day event there. He competed at the next four Olympics, winning bronze medals in the team events at the 1968 Mexico City and 1976 Montreal Games, alongside his son Wayne. He and Wayne were the first father–son combination to win a medal together. At the 1976 Games, he became Australia's oldest Olympic competitor at the age of 61.

He was the Australian flag bearer at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics; Wayne would do the same thing 16 years later. At the time of his death, he was Australia's oldest surviving Olympian, having assumed that mantle at the death of shooter Neville Holt in 2008. and received an Order of Merit from the Australian Olympic Committee in 1978. In 2011 he was inducted into the Equestrian Australia Hall of Fame.