Alex Story (Rower) Background, Career, Politics, Family

Who is Alex Story?

Alex Story (born 6 December 1974) is a former British rower who competed in the British men’s eight at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Story has run unsuccessfully for the Conservative Party on several occasions. Alex Story was born in the French town of Fontainebleau.

Alex Story competed in the men’s eight for Great Britain at the Summer Olympics in 1996.

Career

He competed for Great Britain as a junior, under-23, and senior rower. His professional career lasted from 1992 to 1998.

He qualified for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games at the World Rowing Championships in Tampere, Finland, in 1995. He was retained for the World Rowing Championships in Aiguebelette in 1997, where the British eight finished fourth.

In the Boat Races of 1997 and 1998, he rowed for Cambridge against Oxford.

He was the heaviest man competing in the former and was credited with being the difference between the two crews. Coach Harry Mahon described him as a hero. His crew from 1998 set the course record.

His rowing career was cut short due to a back injury.

He later became involved in the Conservative Party. He ran for Denton and Reddish in the general election in 2005, Wakefield in 2010, and Leeds North West on short notice in 2015. Story finished a distant second in Denton and Reddish, a safe Labour Party seat. Story finished less than 2,000 votes behind the incumbent Labour MP in the next election in the marginal Wakefield constituency. In 2015, Story finished third behind the Liberal Democrats and Labour in a close race between those two parties.

He finished second on the Conservative party’s list for the Yorkshire and Humber region in the 2014 European election, but only one Conservative was elected.

After MEP Timothy Kirkhope was elected to the House of Lords in October 2016, the region’s returning officer asked Story to fill the vacancy. Story needed the Conservative Party to re-nominate him in order to be re-elected, which they refused to do; Story unsuccessfully sought intervention from the High Court. Instead of Story, the Conservative Party appointed John Procter, who was third on the party list, as his replacement.

He campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union in the 2016 European Union membership referendum. He was a founding member of Story Productions, a media production company that still exists today. Story has written for a variety of publications, including The Daily Telegraph and City A.M.

On 5 November 2017, Chris Pincher, the Conservative MP for Tamworth, resigned as Comptroller of the Household (Assistant Whip) and voluntarily referred himself to the Conservative Party’s complaints procedure and the police after Story claimed that Pincher had previously made unwanted sexual advances toward him. Story was allegedly invited to Pincher’s flat, where he was massaged on the neck and discussed his “future in the Conservative Party” before changing into a bathrobe.

In recounting the incident, Story stated that Pincher’s advances made him appear to be a “pound-shop Harvey Weinstein.”

[a][26] “I do not recognize either the events or the interpretation placed on them,” Pincher said, and “if Mr Story has ever felt offended by anything I said, I can only apologise to him.” The Conservative Party’s investigating panel determined that Pincher had not violated the code of conduct on December 23, 2017.

John Story Family

John Story is a father of four children.