'It was just pure Yorkshire grit': The amazing journey of Leeds star Hill

As he stands in the atrium of the Carnegie School of Sport at Leeds Beckett University, the unique running track jutting out of the roof above him, Mick Hill cannot help give a wistful look out onto the field through the window.

- by Nick Westby

HONOUR: Mick Hill in javelin action for Great Britain in 2000. The Leeds athlete was this week inducted into the the Leeds Beckett University Sport Hall of Fame.

(PICTURE: GETTY)

"The first time I came up here I was 14 years old," begins Hill, who grew up two miles away and who from this base would go to four Olympics and win medals at world and European Championships plus the Commonwealth Games.

"I met Wilf Paish, the athletics coach. My uncle was a PE teacher and he found out that Wilf was here with a group of athletes and he knew I was athletic.

"I started training with what was called the Yorkshire and Humberside Centre of Excellence and Wilf invited me into what was quite an elite group. I was into the javelin at the time, but I wanted to be a footballer. I wanted to play for Leeds United. I was playing for Yorkshire Amateurs at the time, they were the best junior football team in Leeds.

"But when I got to 15, 16, Leeds didn't want to sign me, Grimsby and Lincoln were interested but my dad said 'do your A-levels."

From then on, the link between education and elite sport would prove the cornerstone of Hill's journey that brought him back to Leeds Beckett on Wednesday, when he was one of 37 sporting alumni inducted into the university's Hall of Fame.