Evan Baillie Noel was an unlikely Olympic champion. The gold medal won by this slight, owlish, rather poorly man in the men’s singles rackets event at Queen’s Club in 1908 went down in history as the first of the London Games.

The Times, where Noel worked as “director of the sporting department”, reported the feat in modest fashion.

The final itself was won without a ball being struck, Noel’s rival, Henry Leaf, having had to pull out with an injured arm. The absence of foreign entries in the rackets event, contested by just seven Englishmen, did little to bestow a sense of occasion. The official Olympic report said: “There were so many players scratching or failing to make an appearance that the competition lost much of its importance.”

The Times said: “It must be remembered that only in India and in America is the game played to any great extent outside this country.”

Noel had learnt the sport at Winchester, which he represented at the public schools rackets championship. He was one of the first rackets pairs at Cambridge, where he attended Trinity College, reading history. His gold medal was one of 145 medals won by Britain at the first global Olympics — he himself won a bronze with Leaf in the rackets doubles.

He never won a blue at cricket but was a handy slow bowler and took 17 wickets against Holland in a match that he played alongside W.G. Grace.

He was, The Times said in an obituary published on December 24, 1928, after he died at only 49, a “gallant sportsman”. Yet, it was noted, he did not fit the athlete’s bill. “Tall and round-shouldered and thin, he looked as little like a fine player of such physically testing ball games as tennis and rackets as could be imagined,” the newspaper said. “His face was finely drawn and his eyes set back far in his head so that he looked at one rather like a wise old owl.”

Noel, a “dour fighter” who was “negligent of his clothes”, joined the staff in 1903 and was sports editor until 1909, when a doctor advised him to step down because his health could not withstand the night shifts. He convalesced in “the East” but when he returned he still had to “abstain from indoor work”. He remained with the paper until 1914, when he became secretary to Queen’s Club, and he also wrote books on rackets and tennis.