Pirie v KutsOlympic 10,000, Melbourne, 1956Great Races # 11 This epic 1956 distance race featured a classic struggle between a front runner and a fast finisher. Although the race was an Olympic final, there were only two runners in contention almost from the gun. Vladimir Kuts and Gordon Pirie were so much better than the other competitors that their duel took place well ahead of the field, despite the erratic pace that evolved through tactics. It was the first distance race of the Games. Sandor Iharos of Hungary, a former WR holder and thus a favorite, didn’t make it to the start line—the obvious reason being the recent Soviet invasion of his country. His absence meant that there were two clear favorites: Vladimir Kuts (29) of the USSR, who had broken Iharos’s WR just a couple of months earlier with a 28:30.4 clocking, and Briton Gordon Pirie (25), who had a best 47 seconds slower than the WR of Kuts but had by far the better finish.
Welcome
Welcome to Racing Past, a non-profit website dedicated to the history of competitive running.
You will see that Bob Phillips is now carrying the baton for this site, as I have moved on to another website on the arts (coppice-gate.com).
The main reason I have stopped writing articles for this site is that I have covered everything I wanted to write about. Above all, I wanted to write about the great runners who were competing when I was competing at club level for Brighton AC. These were the runners who inspired me and to whom I feel I owe a great debt.
I have been surprised and gratified by the response to this website over the past decade. I will keep Racing Past "running" for as long as I can and am very grateful and honored that such a fine writer as Bob Phillips is continuing to improve this site with his historical articles.
Parades across the world are often military, the Russian May Day Parade for example. But there are many other types of parade—processions of people along a road that celebrate historical events (the end of World War 2) or promote groups of society (the Brazilian Rio Carnival Parade). And of course there is always a Parade of Nations to open the Olympic Games. A unique parade was held in Paris, France, on November 11, 1935. It was organized by the newspaper Paris-Soir to pay homage to a runner who had been banned for life some four years previously. Jules Ladoumègue had captured the hearts of his nation when he had broken six world records and won an Oålympic silver medal. A very sensitive and modest man, “Julot” nevertheless appealed to the French, who were still recovering from German occupation in World War 1. He also appealed to the public with his elegant running style.
GEORGE YOUNG PROFILE 1937 - 2022 American middle-distance runner George Young will be remembered most of all for establishing American steeplechasing on the international map, for solidifying the 1952 gold-medal achievement of Horace Ashenfelter. Young placed fifth and third in the 1964 and 1968 Olympic Steeplechase finals and set an American record of 8:30.4. He will also be remembered for his competitive toughness. This toughness was perfectly exemplified near the end of his career (at age 36) when he had an memorable battle with 21-year-old Prefontaine in the 1972 USA Olympic Trials 5,000. Young’s ongoing reputation as a tough guy was brilliantly captured in the Prefontaine movie Without Limits. In a memorable scene (http://cdn1.anyclip.com/BTCO2tntJhYbu.mp4), Donald Sutherland, playing Coach Bill Bowerman, visits Prefontaine (Billy Crudup) to announce with great gravity: “George Young is in town.” This echoes a classic line in many western movies when locals learn that a famous gunfighter has arrived in town. George Young was indeed a “famous gunfighter” on the American track scene in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Martin Hyman Profile 1933-2021 “I’m driven, analytical, and a keen observer.” English distance runner Martin Hyman lacked basic speed. He couldn’t beat 2:00 for 800; his best 400 was a pedestrian 57.5. Yet he was able to place 4th in three major track championships, and from 1958 to 1964 he recorded times that even today would put him in the top six of the British rankings for 10,000. On the road he was considered by some as unbeatable. He had notable wins in Spain and Brazil and set many course records. Even in cross-country, which he considered his weakest event, he ran 3rd in the 1961 international championships.
Gerry Lindgren Profile b. 9 March 1946 Few runners have appeared on the distance-running scene as dramatically as American Gerry Lindgren. In 1964 while still a schoolboy, he emerged from a remote area of Washington State near the Canadian border to run a series of world-class races. His successes that year took him to the Tokyo Olympics as one of the favorites in the 10,000. Until the 1960s teenagers rarely competed in distance events. It was universally believed that distance running was a mature man’s sport; teenagers were strongly discouraged from running long distances on the road and track. Only in cross-country races were they allowed to run longer distances up to 5,000. Thus up to 1960 no American teenagers, except for Louis Zamperini, posted world class times in distance events. (In 1964 the top distance runners were in their late 20s: Jazy 28, Roelants 27, Clarke 28). Gerry Lindgren was the second teenage sensation in the 1960s. A 17-year-old Canadian, Bruce Kidd, had emerged from obscurity in the 1961 American indoor season as a world-class distance runner. Following Lindgren came Jim Ryun, Mary Decker, Steve Ovett and Dave Bedford. It is hard to find a clear reason for this emergence of teenage distance stars, but surely the youth-oriented 1960s culture (the Beatles, self-expression, Woodstock) must have been behind it.
The Landy Era by Len Johnson: Book Review There have been several books on Bannister’s breaking of the four-minute Mile, but until now we haven’t had a book that focuses on John Landy. This is not to say that there hasn’t been some good material on the great Australian miler. Neal Bascomb’s excellent The Perfect Mile provides some excellent material on Landy’s build-up to 1954; Nelson and Quercetani cover Landy’s career with their usual thoroughness in their indispensible The Milers. There is also good material on Landy, although on a smaller scale, in John Bryant’s 3:59.4: The Quest to Break the Four-Minute Mile and in Jim Denison’s Bannister and Beyond. But was not until Len Johnson’s The Landy Era, published in 2009, that have we been given the full story.
Quicksilver: The Mercurial Emil Zatopek by Pat Butcher 705wGloberunner Productions, 2016. 209pp. The late Emil Zatopek ranks as one of the most inspirational figures in the history of track. He inspired us not only as a competitor but also as an innovative trainer and as a human being. Such was his stature that a regular number of “pilgrims” used to travel to Czechoslovakia to meet him. So it is surprising that until 2015 only three books on him had been published (See my book review “Three Books on Zatopek”) However, there has been a veritable deluge of Zatopek books in the last year. First to appear was Pavel Kosatik’s Emil-Bezec, which was written in the Czech language. Then early in 2016 two more were published: Today We Die a Little: The Rise and Fall of Emil Zatopek, Olympic Legend by Richard Askwith and Endurance: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Emil Zatopek by Rick Broadbent. Later in 2016 a fourth book appeared: Quicksilver: the Mercurial Emil Zatopek by Pat Butcher.
55 Years Running by Edwin Oxlade2013, 396pp There must be lots of people in the British running community who know the name Edwin Oxlade. Not that he was a top-level runner. In fact, he was a good club runner with times of 49:52 for 10 Miles, 1:05:57 for a half Marathon and 2:24:24 for a Marathon. For a long time he was deeply involved with the UK club scene, and he has now decided to put all his memories and opinions into print. “ I like to think of the book as a personal view of the history of running, in particular British distance running, during the course of my lifetime,” he explains in his short preface. “Personal” is a key word here because Edwin Oxlade has a lot of opinions--and I don’t mean this in a negative way.
The Miracle Mile: Stories of the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, by Jason Beck. Half Moon Bay, BC, Canada: Caitlin Press, 2016. Softback, $29. 95. 318pp This large-format book is beautifully produced (kudos to Vici Johnstone, who designed the over and text), and it offers a generous amount of black-and-white photography. It is clearly a labour of love for author Jason Beck, who is the Curator and Facility Director of the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame in Vancouver. Much of the work on his ten-year project for this book was done while commuting. Although he had no spare time during business hours to work on this book, his job did give him one big advantage: “Access to the largest collection of BECG-related material anywhere in the world as well as key contacts, each of whom had some connection to the Games as an athlete, spectator, volunteer official or coach.” (BECG = British Empire and Commonwealth Games)
Foster’s Forebears. The Origins and Progress Two-Miles Records When Brendan Foster set the last officially recognised World record for two miles back in 1973 maybe all he received by way of reward was a food parcel. His time of 8:13.8 was achieved at a meeting on his favoured home region track at Gateshead in the north-east of England, and the meeting was sponsored by the dairy-products company, Kraft. It was largely in the North of England that the two-mile distance had first been contested more than 150 years previously, and tracing back through the record times of the 19th Century, James Pudney had done rather better for himself when he ran 9:38.0 in 1852. His £50 prize money is worth over £60,000 in 2021 income value.
Presto! Presto! Prestissimo!!!The concert violinist with another vibrant sporting string to her bow Valerie Ball, the leading British woman quarter-miler and half-miler of the late 1940s and early 1950s, would no doubt have been at complete social ease with the aristocratic president of the sport’s ruling body, theWAAA, who was the Countess of Derby. Miss Ball was the daughter of an eminent botanist, Sir Nigel Gresley Ball, and her grandfather, Sir Charles Irwin Ball, had been the most senior member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Ireland. An uncle of her father’s was the Royal Astronomer in the 19th Century. One of her two brothers, also named Sir Charles Ball, was a director of numerous prosperous companies, including Barclay’s Bank and Sun Alliance insurance. Her ultra-fashionable address in later married life was close to her parents at Broadlands Court, alongside Kew Gardens, in south-west London.
Where footsteps Led to Cheptegei. In Search of Uganda’s First Distance-runners of Note The successes of Ugandan distance-runners in recent years, culminating in Joshua Cheptegei’s World records at 5000 and 10,000 metres, caused me to wonder who were the pioneers in that country in these events. Inevitably, a first thought that came to mind was concerned with the influence of the highly esteemed Malcolm Arnold, who went to Uganda from Britain as Director of Coaching from 1968 to 1972 and famously discovered John Akii-Bua, winner of Olympic and Commonwealth titles and World record-breaker at 400 metres hurdles in those years. Arnold also guided the careers of Judith Ayaa and Silver Ayoo, bronze and silver (aptly enough!) medallists for 400 metres at the Commonwealth Games of 1970 and 1974 respectively.
Jamaica's 43-year-old 800m RecordDesperately needed after 40 years, a new man to succeed “one of the special ones”There’s a strange anomaly in the list of Jamaican national records. Usain Bolt’s times are, of course, phenomenal, and the 400 metres is understandably a shade less impressive but still of a very fine class, 43.93 by Rusheen McDonald in 2015. So why is the 800 metres so ordinary? And why does it still stand after 43 years?Seymour Newman ran 1:45.2 in 1977. Making comparisons by means of the Hungarian Scoring Tables points system which equates all events, that’s as if Don Quarrie still holds his country’s 100 metres record from that year at 10.19 – he actually ran 10.12 in 1977. Not only that but 59 national records at 800 metres are currently better than Jamaica’s, including those of Djibouti, Iran, Egypt, Kuwait, Latvia, Puerto Rico, Senegal and even three others which haven’t existed for 30 years or so, East Germany, the USSR and Yugoslavia. Yet Newman was among the best exponents of his generation at both 400 and 800 metres, and the Jamaican AAA website rightly says oi him, “Newman’s prowess on the track marked him as the successor to Arthur Wint and George Kerr, the great Jamaican 400 and 800 runners of the past”.