Keele University is sad to report the passing of Professor John Bale, who has died aged 83. Professor Bale taught at Keele between 1979 and 2005. 

He was a Professor of Sports Geography, with his son Anthony saying he had an extremely happy and fulfilling career at Keele. 

He was one of the pioneers of the field of Sports Geography. His many books included Sports Geography (1980), The Brawn Drain (1991), and Sport, Space, and the City (1993).  

Sport and Place (1989; 2003) was a field-defining work, and Kenyan Running (1997), co-written with Keele PhD student Joe Sang, won the Lord Aberdare Prize for Sports History.  

Imagined Olympians (2002) showed how Belgian colonists in Rwanda had exploited sport, whilst his book Roger Bannister and the Four-Minute Mile (2005) asked the reader to think about the role of class in British sport.  

John published a frank memoir “A Life in Sport” in 2013, in which he writes fondly of his time at Keele.  

John was diagnosed with dementia in 2012 and had been unwell for many years, supported with boundless love by his wife Ruth, who survives him. He is also survived by his sons, Roderick and Anthony.