Stephen Milsted

Stephen Milsted was a founder member of the Bushido Judo Kwai, back in 1976 he was training to become a chef at Fenwicks of Newcastle.
At this time we were involved in the selection of a junior team to compete at the European Schools Judo Championships in Frankfurt, West Germany, which was organised by the International Budo Federation, we had seven of our junior members selected and it was our hope that as a club we could cover all of our members expenses, to do this we needed to raise £700, quite a tall order in 1977.
Linda our secretary set about organizing some fund raising events, while Steve Milsted decided to do a run from Morpeth to Newcastle and this brought us up to our target figure.
Steve later qualified as a chef and moved to the Intercontinental Hotel, Flensburg, West Germany, he purchased us a shield which would be presented to the junior member, who finished the year at the top of our medal table and this was called the Stephen Milsted Award, the first to win it was Jan Russell in 1978 and the most recent Johnny Lawson in 2010.
Only three members have won this award more than once and they were, Barry McSherry, Chris Woods and Steve Ellerby.
Steve Milsted now lives in Doncaster, Austrailia.

Photo, Steve Milsted during the Morpeth to Newcastle run.