Racing Past

The History of Middle and Long Distance Running

Bob Phillips Articles / PROFILE

LENNART STRAND: “A Swedish Swiftie on the Cinders”




 

It’s a competitive record of which any athlete would be justly proud – a European title, an Olympic silver medal, a World record – but Lennart Strand’s track career is invariably depicted in rather different terms. “Before a race, every race, any race, he is as nervous as a debutante before her first ball, even if his opponents are second-raters”, once wrote a journalist from Strand’s native Sweden. “He has come out to start a race without a vest. His friends are afraid that he may one day appear without anything”. 

The author of these words was Lars-Henrik Ottosson, an eminent writer and radio broadcaster who contributed a profile of Strand to the highly regarded British monthly magazine, “World Sports”, for one of its preview issues of the 1948 Olympic Games in London. Thankfully avoiding any charge of offending public decency, Strand had by then won the 1946 European Championships 1500 metres from one of his fellow-countrymen, Henry Eriksson, and the next year had matched the fastest ever time at the distance, 3:43.0, set by his most famed compatriot, Gunder Hägg. Swedish predominance was maintained in the ensuing Olympic final, though it was Eriksson who then won from Strand.

Hägg and his ubiquitous rival, Arne Andersson, had between them accumulated 19 World records from 1500 to 5000 metres in the years 1941 to 1945, benefiting from their country’s wartime neutrality, and Strand had played a key supporting role. He was employed as a newspaper compositor in his home town of Malmö, and Hägg moved residence and his fireman’s job there, as Ottosson related: “He trained with Strand in the woods outside the town, and the other famous Swedish miler, Andersson, had a share, so to speak, in Strand, who launched them both on several of their usually successful attacks on the World records”. When Hägg ran his 3:43.0 in Gothenburg, on 7 July 1944, Strand led through 400 metres in 56.0 and 800 metres in 1:56.0, and then 11 days later in Malmö Strand again passed the 800 mark in 1:56.0 as Andersson went on to a World record 4:01.6 for the mile. In both races Strand dropped out, his mission accomplished.  

“Gunder and Lennart continued to work together, preparing themselves to push the mile record below four minutes, when the former ‘hare’ suddenly found himself alone”, Ottosson continued. “Hägg and Andersson had been suspended, and a little later they were declared non-amateurs”. Strand had been a regional champion oarsman before taking up athletics in 1942, having been born in the Möllevängen district of Malmö, in the south of Sweden, on 13 June 1921. Malmö is Sweden’s third largest city after Stockholm and Gothenburg, with a population which has increased from 200,000 in the early 1950s to over 350,000, and benefits from a relatively mild climate and 17½ hours of light each day in mid-summer. Very soon running 1:54.5 for 800 metres, Strand had made modest progress by 1944 to 1:53.1 and 1500 metres in 3:55.4, maybe inhibited by his pace-making servitude, but the next year he “leapt into world class”, as Ottosson put it, running 3:47.0 for 3rd place in an enthrallingly close race in Stockholm with Andersson, 3:46.8, and Rune Persson, also 3:47.0. All of the 19 performances throughout the World at 3:49.0 or better that year were achieved by Swedes in Sweden, except for two by Britain’s Sydney Wooderson, and even one of those was during a mile race against Andersson in Gothenburg.

Strand again had a part to play in the last two World records of Gunder Hägg’s illustrious career. On 17 July in that same year of 1944 in Malmö Hägg ran his iconic 4:01.3 mile, though on this occasion he made his own pace from halfway onwards, and Strand was a distant 4th, apparently easing off by design, as the split times show that he took 21.7 seconds for the 109.35 metres from 1500 metres to the finish and Hägg 16.0 seconds. On 29 July in Norrköping Strand was in much more serious mood to take a share with Hägg in a World record when their Malmö AI team put together a 4 x 1500 metres relay time of 15:38.6, and Strand’s third stage of 3:50.2 was a key factor. He moved significantly ahead of the schedule set by a Stockholm club, Brandkårens IK, four years previously, leaving Hägg to run a comparatively leisurely 3:52.3 anchor. Strand’s time remained the fastest in a World record 4 x 1500 until the Hungarian national team ran 15:29.2 eight years later. The Malmö club’s achievement was, poignantly, Hägg’s last World record and Strand’s first.

One of the unknowingly farewell appearances of the wartime Swedish record-breakers was at the White City Stadium, in London, a week after the relay record, where Andersson beat Wooderson at a mile – as he would do so again in Gothenburg in September – in times of 4:08.8 and 4:09.2, and Hägg won at two miles in 9:00.6. Their lifetime disqualification soon afterwards has led subsequent writers to describe Strand as the natural successor, and as he had inflicted a decisive miling defeat on Andersson and Hägg later that September in Stockholm, 4:04.8 to Andersson’s 4:07.2, with Hägg run right out of it, 4th in 4:13.2, who could persuasively argue with such a judgement? In their hugely detailed history, “The Milers”, published in 1985, Cordner Nelson, editor of the authoritative Californian magazine, “Track & Field News”, and Roberto Quercetani, the universally acknowledged maestro of athletics historians, noted that Hägg was reported as saying afterwards, “Arne may not agree with me, but our best days are over. We have taken so much out of ourselves, and out of each other, for years. I believe Strand can beat us every time from now on”. 

Strand, no doubt buoyed by such an attribute, followed in Hägg’s footsteps by setting off on a transatlantic flight for a tour of the USA in 1946. Air travel then was a challenging affair for passengers – more than 17 hours from England to New York, for instance – but during wartime in 1943 Hägg had made the even more tedious and hazardous journey across the ocean by merchant vessel for a series of races in which he had won successive miles in 4:05.3 (the fastest ever outdoors in the USA), 4:05.4 and 4:06.9 and the AAU 5000 metres, and thus helped raise $136,000 in war bonds. So Strand’s visit was a welcome sequel, and he promptly made a bright and breezy impression by demonstrating his talents as a pianist with a rendering of popular American songs at the press conference held on his arrival in New York. Closing the piano-lid to a hearty round of applause from the gathered journalists – some of whom remembered Hägg’s dour demeanour in 1943 and again on an unimpressive largely indoor campaign in March and April of 1945 – Strand set off on another long plane journey to California, where he had a date with the annual Compton Invitational meet on 7 June. 

There he won a 3:51.4 1500 metres by 60 yards from Johnny Fulton, who had no great reputation as a miler but early the next year on tour in New Zealand would run a sensationally fast 880 yards against the local champion, Doug Harris – their times of 1:49.4 and an estimated 1:49.5 being worth a second faster than anyone else at 800 metres in the World that year. It seems hard to believe but California in those days had only ever produced one miler of international class, and he was Louis Zamperini, who had run 4:08.3 in 1938, having been in the 1936 Olympic 5000 metres final at the age of 19 – and almost 70 years later would have his adventurous sporting and wartime experiences depicted in the Angelina Jolie film, “Unbroken”. Zamperini had not been born in California but had been taken there as a two-year-old by his parents from New York. 

Another long journey, 1,350 miles, to San Antonio, Texas, after three weeks of sight-seeing and presumably some training sessions was required before the AAU Championships, where on 29 June Strand outclassed Leslie MacMitchell, who had won all eight of his races indoors the previous winter, and Tommy Quinn by 40 yards at 1500 metres in an unpressed 3:54.5. The race was run at seven o’clock in the evening, when the temperature was still 71degF, which ought perhaps to have been a stimulus to the runners, but the pace was ridiculously idle, 66 and 2:16. Then Strand strode away through a third lap in 58 seconds, and the “contest” was as good as over.  Back to New York – a 1,820 miles air flight practically the length of the United States – Strand had an equally facile mile win on 2 July in 4:09.0 on the historic Randall’s Island track, Quinn trailing by 60 yards, 4:17.1, and MacMitchell much further back, 4:25.8, though Gunder Hägg had been faster there in 1943, with 4:06.9, pressed all the way by Gil Dodds, the current US champion, 4:07.2. Strand was described by Harold Classen, of the internationally syndicated Associated Press news agency, as being “as relaxed as a leaf of wilted lettuce”, which might not have been how Strand would have preferred to be remembered. He then departed with further fanciful gastronomically-inclined praise from the imaginative Classen ringing in his ears. “Lennart Strand climbs aboard a transatlantic plane for home today, and if the airship is just as fast in the clouds as the Swedish swiftie is on the cinders the Malmö printers will tear a festive herring in his honour by nightfall”. Strand’s mile would remain the fastest in the USA that year by more than three seconds, indoors or out, and in Malmö on 27 August he ran the fastest by anyone in the World for that twelve-month, 4:06.6. 

Strand rather seemed to have soon settled the issue later in 1946 regarding the succession to Hägg and Andersson with his European title in Oslo. This is neatly summarised in the massive history of the Championships from their inauguration in 1934, published in Spain in 2010: “The two Swedes took control after 500 metres and by the bell had opened up a 15-metre gap on the group. Strand, ‘the pacemaker favoured by Hägg’, got away from his team-mate in a dramatic change of pace, winning in 3:48.0, eight-tenths of a second quicker than Eriksson”. The 3rd-placed runner, Erik Jørgensen, of Denmark, was far behind, 3:52.8, and other possible challengers were absent, having preferred different events: Wooderson 1st and Willy Slijkhuis, of Holland, 2nd at 5000 metres (Wooderson thus adding to the 1500 metres title he had won in 1938), and Marcel Hansenne, of France, 3rd at 800 metres, won by another Swede, Rune Gustafsson. The honour of becoming the first Swedish World record-holder after the Hägg-Andersson epoch actually fell to Gustafsson, who less than a fortnight later beat by one-tenth the 1000 metres time of 2:21.5 set in 1941 by Rudolf Harbig, who three years later was killed in action with the German Army on the Russian Front. Gustafsson also had run a 4:05.8 mile behind Andersson and Wooderson in that Gothenburg race of 1945 and was thought of as another candidate for the sub-four-minute mile..

Strand began his 1947 season in May in customary fashion, with a series of four untested 1500 metres wins in local meetings in times ranging from 3:59.4 to 3:55.4 before a more meaningful 3:52.6 in Stockholm and then 3:52.2 in Oslo on 26 June. His World record-equalling 1500 metres of 3:43.0, on 15 July in his home town of Malmö, is said to have been a surprise, especially to Strand himself, but the signs were already in place for all to see as he had shown exceptional form 11 days previously with 3:44.8 ahead of Eriksson, 3:45.4, in Gävle, a town of 70,000 or so population in central Sweden, where Hägg had been a member of the local Gefle IF club before joining Strand in Malmö. 

Strand said of his 3:43.0, “I did not think it was very good at all, around 3:49-3:50, I was satisfied with the win and eased off at the end”. Lars-Henrik Ottosson wrote in “World Sports”, “Neither Strand nor his runner-up, Eriksson, had realised that they were travelling so fast. ‘We could have easily completed the mile inside four minutes’ was Strand’s comment after the race”. All the intermediate clockings, even including each 100 metres, were studiously registered by the Malmö timekeepers, but maybe such vital information was either not called out to Strand or he did not hear it. The Idrottsplats track was oddly 393.05 metres in circumference, which might have caused some confusion. 

Athletics, even at the highest level, was a much less strident affair in Sweden, as elsewhere, in 1947. Strand had arrived unannounced at the stadium a mile or so from his home by bicycle, and as a Swedish writer, Karsten Klinteberg, was to recall in later years, “He made a discrete entrance to the ground. Even though he was the main attraction of the meeting, there was no flashy presentation of athletes in those days”. Having found a safe parking-place for his cycle (though who among the thronged crowd, some of them friends and neighbours, have dared steal it ?), Strand joined the six other starters for the race, which was held at eight o’clock on a typically balmy Nordic evening, with not a breath of wind, An over eager pacemaker, Börje Karlsson, jumped the gun, but the starter, who was a 1936 Olympic sprinter, Lennart Lindgren, did not call the runners back for fear of unnerving Strand ! Karlsson obliviously led Strand through 400 metres, 57.0 to 57.8, and then Eriksson moved ahead at 800 metres in 1:59.3. The most vivid description of what happened next is by Cordner Nelson and Roberto Quercetani in “The Milers”, who were to enthuse, “Eriksson took the lead and set a pace worthy of Hägg himself. In fact, it was almost Hägg vs. Andersson all over again, with Strand following Eriksson’s strong pace. Eriksson went past 1200 metres in 2:59.6, with Strand running smoothly behind, flittering along as if it cost him no effort. They rounded the curve in tandem, and the crowd roared with excitement at one of the greatest races ever run. Strand pulled alongside in the home stretch. Eriksson, like Hägg before him, made a total effort until Strand pulled away and settled the issue. When it was hopeless, Eriksson eased off”. 

For interest the intriguingly variable 100 metres splits for Hägg in 1944 and for Strand were the following:

1944: 13.8, 13.4, 14.5, 15.0, 14.5, 14.8, 14.9, 15.6, 15.1, 15.4, 15.6, 15.4, 15.2, 14.8, 15.0 

1947: 13.8, 14.7, 14.6, 14.7, 14.1, 15.5, 15.9, 16.0, 16.3, 14.6, 14.6, 14.8, 14.6, 14.6, 14.2

Strand and Hägg’s shared record was further equalled by Werner Lueg, of Germany, in 1952 and not beaten until the USA’s Wes Santee ran 3:42.8 en route to a 4:00.6 mile in 1954. 

Strand and Eriksson were in constant demand just as Hägg and Andersson had been – during 1947 Strand ran 22 races, all but three at 1500 metres or the mile, and Eriksson 27, of which 17 were at those distances. In their last season of 1945 Hägg had raced on 38 occasions and Andersson 34. Strand ran no faster than 3:46.8 and 4:07.0 for the mile during the remainder of the 1947 season and finished dejectedly with a 3:53.0 for 5th place in Paris behind national records for France (Marcel Hansenne 3:47.9), Belgium (Gaston Reiff  3:48.4) and Luxemburg (Josy Barthel 3:51.0), but Strand’s plane on arrival had made an emergency landing in gale-force winds, which could have done nothing for his peace of mind. 

A fortnight after Strand’s record Gefle IF had set a new 4 x 1500 record of 15:34.6, with Eriksson completing the distance in 3:53.1. The Malmö AI quartet was far behind 2nd in 15:56.8, but Strand still valiantly ran 3:52.8 in a losing cause. Gefle IF were to improve the record on their home town Strömvallen track to 15:30.2 in 1949, again closing their account with Eriksson (3:53.0). Furthermore, the same club set 4 x 1 mile records of 16:55.8 in 1948 and 16:42.8 in 1949, with Eriksson performing his customary role. Also figuring in all three record-setting Gefle IF teams were Ingvar Bengtsson and Olof (“Olle”) Åberg, with Bengtsson’s lead-off of 4:09.7 in 1949 being the fastest relay split yet. That record lasted until 1953, beaten by a Great Britain national team, and Åberg in the meantime had earned yet another IAAF World record certificate with 1000 metres in 2:21.3 in 1952.

Swedish predominance in the 1948 Olympic 1500 metres final was understandably not at all unexpected. Strand had run 3:47.6 in June, Henry Eriksson 3:48.0 and Gösta Bergkvist 3:48.4 in July, and though none of them were as fast as the previous year (Bergkvist had run 3:46.6) they had no obvious challengers. A Czech, Václav Čevona, had done 3:49.4; the Frenchman, Marcel Hansenne, 3:49.8; the fastest American, Gil Dodds, 4:08.8 for the mile, equivalent to 3:50.6, but he had missed the “sudden death” US Olympic Trials through injury and illness. Cordner Nelson and Roberto Quercetani summed up the situation in their 1985 history: “Former hotbeds of mile racing such as Great Britain and the United States had been completely stripped of their best runners. The last American succumbed when Dodds was injured. The last British chance went when Wooderson retired”. One of the most knowledgeable of British athletics correspondents, Jack Oaten, of the London “Evening News”, previewing the Olympic Games in a 112-page profusely illustrated booklet, was adamant, “Sweden seems to have produced in Lennart Strand the finest miler yet seen”.

Oaten then provided readers with an authoritative and entertaining pen-picture of Strand, fragile in appearance at 1.73 metres (5ft 8in) in height and 61 kilogrammes (134 pounds) in weight: “A runner who looks less likely to be the man to produce ‘The Four Minute Mile’ it is difficult to imagine. Yet such a good judge as Sydney Wooderson has put the ‘Swedish Wonder’ in this category. Strand, 27 years old, is a slightly-built pale-faced runner whose apparent physical frailness is emphasised by his fair hair, which he wears long and allows to flop about like a girl’s shingle. But there is nothing frail about Strand’s running. Only after he is satisfied with his preparation will he start racing, but once he has committed himself to the track his only training takes the form of racing. I shall never forget his expression of disgust after a race at Malmö in 1946, when he set himself to do a mile in 4 minutes 4 seconds and failed – by two seconds ! He considered he had run a bad race. Sweden knows Strand as ‘Hägg’s Hare’ because of the number of times he acted as pacemaker to the famous runner. Strand will be pacemaker to the world at Wembley next August, and very likely the world won’t catch him ! Sweden has no fewer than six others – Eriksson, Bergkvist, Ringvall, Ahldén, Persson and Albertsson – and deciding Sweden’s three for the 1500 metres at Wembley will be a miniature Olympics in itself”.

Though Jack Oaten was not proved right regarding his belief in Strand’s superiority, there may have been an explanation, as related by Harold Abrahams in his account for the British Olympic Association’s splendidly detailed “Official Report”, published by “World Sports” magazine. Abrahams wrote, “On the 12th anniversary of Lovelock’s wonderful world record in the 1500 metres we expected, with such a fine field, that yet one more Olympic record would be accomplished, but the appalling conditions made this well-nigh impossible, and in the circumstances 3mins 49.8secs – two seconds slower than Lovelock – was remarkable”. On a typical British summer’s day of pouring rain, and so a waterlogged cinder track, the dozen finalists were Strand, Eriksson and Bergkvist (Sweden), Čevona (Czechoslovakia), Jørgensen (Denmark), Hansenne (France) and Slijkhuis (Holland), all as expected, together with Denis Johansson (Finland), Bill Nankeville (Great Britain), Sándor Garay (Hungary), Josy Barthel (Luxemburg) and Don Gehrmann (USA).

Abrahams gave the following account: “From the gun Hansenne set off at a very fast pace and covered the first 400 metres in 58.3 and the 800 in 2mins 2.6secs. And that was the end of him. The two Swedes, Eriksson and Strand, were in the lead with 350 yards to go, and down the back straight Nankeville made a great effort which brought him up to 4thposition. In the home straight Eriksson forged ahead of Strand, who glanced over his shoulder and seeing that he was safe for 2nd position (though Slijkhuis was finishing very fast) did not seriously fight for premier honours. Sweden, who in late years have produced so many fine middle-distance performers, finished all three representatives in the first six, an achievement not accomplished by any one country in the Olympic 1500 metres for 36 years”. The erudite Abrahams, who had himself won Olympic 100 metres gold in 1924, might have added, if editorial space had allowed, that in the previous 1500 metres final of 1912 which he cited the USA had 2nd, 3rd and 4th places and Sweden 5th, 7thand 12th. The result of the 1948 Olympic 1500 metres final was as follows:

1 Eriksson 3:49.8, 2 Strand 3:50.4, 3 Slijkhuis 3:50.4, 4 Čevona 3:51.2, 5 Bergkvist 3:52.2, 6 Nankeville 3:52.6, 7 Gehrmann, 8 Jørgensen, 9 Johansson, 10 Barthel, 11 Hansenne, 12 Garay.  No times were made public after the first six (!), but a form of automatic timing was in use, and research by the late Bob Sparks, of the Association of Track & Field Statisticians, eventually revealed in 1993 a time for Eriksson of 3:50.0 and margins behind him of +0.40 Strand, +0.48 Slijkhuis, +1.37 Čevona, +2.05 Bergkvist, +2.51 Nankeville, +4.63 Gehrmann, +4.65 Jørgensen, +6.28 Johansson, +7.14 Barthel, though Hansenne, who was apparently hand-timed in 4:02.0, and Garay did not appear on the automatic film.

The Italian-born supremo of athletics historians, Roberto Quercetani, writing reflectively in the year 2000, had a rather different take on the race: “As destiny and Strand’s nerves would have it, Eriksson, the ‘eternal second’, chose a most important occasion to finally turn the tables on his conqueror. The race was run in a downpour, and Eriksson, the compact type of runner, was better equipped, physically and psychologically, for such a test of sheer strength. Strand barely salvaged 2nd place from the last-ditch assault of Slijkhuis. After his great Olympic victory, Eriksson ceased to be one of Sweden’s countless Erikssons and was nicknamed ‘Guld-Eriksson’ (guld, Swedish for gold). Strand, the hypersensitive type, was shocked by his failure to dominate a perennial underdog in the race that counted most”.   

There was not much in the way of post-Olympic competition in 1948 and the only subsequent relevant performances of note that year were 3:48.2 by a revitalised Hansenne in Paris, wins by Eriksson of 3:49.0 in Stockholm and 3:49.2 in Helsinki, and a crushing mile defeat of Strand by Slijkhuis in Malmö, 4:09.4 to 4:11.8, which was not at all the sort of homecoming that Strand would have certainly wished for. Hansenne and Slijkhuis were both invited to compete indoors in the USA at the beginning of 1949, together with Olympic 5000 metres champion Gaston Reiff, and two Swedes were added to the guest list, but they were Ingvar Bengtsson (5th in the Olympic 800 metres) and Erik Ahldén (4th at 5000 metres), and not Eriksson and Strand, who were the pair that Dan Ferris, the autocratic US Amateur Athletic Union director, would surely have preferred. Bengtsson and Ahldén did well enough, respectively 2nd to Slijkhuis and Reiff in the AAU Championships mile and two miles.

Outdoors in 1949 the first 1500 metres time of note was 3:47.4 by Hansenne in Paris on 2 June, which was the fastest ever by a non-Swede, though maybe still not giving Strand much cause for concern. By contrast, when Strand ran a 3:45.2 in Stockholm on 21 August, setting a national championships record that would last 27 years, he may have been taken aback when he learned very soon afterwards that the “Flying Dutchman”, Willy Slijkhuis, had turned in a 3:43.8 in Antwerp the same day in a Belgium-v-Holland match far ahead of Reiff, 3:46.0. Only Hägg and Strand himself had ever run faster, and it would have been inevitable had the date been three-quarters of a century later that Slijkhuis and Strand would have promptly been brought together by a keen-eyed promoter for an attack on the 1500 metres or mile records, or likely both, but no one thought of that. Instead, attention had been focused on what was described as “The Match Of The Century” – Scandinavia versus the USA in Oslo over three days, 27-28-29 July – and Strand, Eriksson and Åberg duly swept aside the US champion, John Twomey, at 1500 metres, 3:49.0, 3:49.2, 3:49.8 … 3:51.6.  Even so, the USA won overall 238.5 points to 224.5, and included in the time-table were a marathon, a decathlon and a 4 x 1500 metres relay for which Strand was not needed as the Gefle IF World record-holders, Bengtsson, Bergkvist, Åberg and Eriksson, were selected en bloc and finished untroubled some three-quarters of a lap ahead, 15:41.2 to 16:22.2. All the Gefle runners were employed in the local fire brigade, and Eriksson gave up running after 1949 to concentrate on his call-out duties.

Strand had another match win in September, 3:50.0 for 1500 metres, Sweden-v-The Rest of Northern Europe in Stockholm, and added personal bests at 800 metres in 1:51.8 and in a very rare appearance at 3000 metres, 8:18.8, within two days the same month, but his only mile race was a disastrous affair for him at Gävle on 19 July. There Åberg and Bergkvist ran the fastest times of the year, 4:05.4 and 4:05.8, and Strand trailed home in 4:13.5. Even so, the Swedish sports journalists’ association voted Strand a close 2nd in their “Sportsman of the Year” poll to a cross-country skier, Nils Ostensson, who had tragically been killed in a motor-cycle accident.

Towards the end of 1949 a timely article about the “speedplay” form of training developed in Sweden had been contributed to “Track & Field News” in California, by the Swedish Olympic coach, Gösta Holmér. He had been applying such a fitness programme since the 1930s, and Hägg, Andersson and Strand were the shining examples of its effectiveness. Holmér wrote, “Here in Sweden we saw ourselves conquered by the Finns until in the middle of the 1930s I decided to try to create something new, something that suited our mind and the nature of our country. I rejected the American opinion that the runner should have fixed distances during their daily training schedule. I realised, of course, the great importance of that, but I wanted to give the boys a feeling of self-creating. Speed and endurance are the marks a runner should follow in his training, and following those lines I made up a system that I call ‘Fartlek’, meaning in English ‘speedplay’ ”.

Holmér, fully appreciative of the fact that not everyone had a forest conveniently on their doorstep, proposed the grass-land of a sports field as the sort of suitable venue for a repeated sequence of , for example, easy five or 10 minutes running to warm-up, “steady hard speed” for ¾-of-a-mile to 1¼ miles, five minutes of rapid walking, easy running interspersed with sprints of 50 to 60 metres “until you feel a little tired” followed by a series of three or four sudden “swift steps” as if briefly accelerating in a race, full speed uphill for 175 to 200 yards, then “fast pace” for one minute, finishing with as much as five laps of the track. Holmér’s enthusiasm struck even a lyrical note. “It is not the fixed courses that make a Professor out of a student, but the student’s spirit of exploration, his studies of other explorers and his friendship with them. It is the same thing with an athlete. Fartlek is such a field of investigation. Fartlek is rich in content. Richer for the athlete with a creative power and the ability of deciding where there is a limit for his strength”. 

In 1950 Strand made a return visit to the USA but for a single race this time over the mile distance on 2 June back at the Compton Invitational, in California, where he had won at 1500 metres four years before. Arriving in Los Angeles via New York on 25 May he had a week to prepare and ran 3:05.4 for three-quarters of a mile in training, with a 57.2 last lap, telling reporters that he felt ready for a mile in 4:07-to-4:08. This remark must have caused much hurried scribbling in note-pads as the meet record set the previous year was a mere 4:14.0 by a 1948 Olympian at 5000 metres, Jerry Thompson. Strand’s prediction was spot-on because he won easily in 4:07.3, with intermediate times of 59.0, 2:05.0 and 3:08.7, and in the process set the fastest time ever achieved on the West Coast of the USA and beat what in the fullness of time would turn out to be a stellar pair of US competitors. Bob McMillen was 2nd in 4:09.5, and two years later would be the totally unexpected silver-medallist in the Olympic 1500 metres, and further back was Horace Ashenfelter, who would be the equally unlikely steeplechase gold-medallist.    

Perhaps unwisely, Strand ran a 1500 metres in Malmö on 7 June, having spent a harrowing three days in air travel back from the USA, and had Reiff, Hansenne and the immensely promising Algerian-born Frenchman, Patrick El Mabrouk, for the most severe of opposition. Reiff won decisively in the year’s fastest time of 3:46.6 from El Mabrouk, 3:48.4, and Hansenne, 3:49.8, with Strand almost out of sight, 4:03.6. Roberto Quercetani refereed to Strand as “temperamental”, and that was an opinion to be treated with respect, but in this instance it was surely sheer tiredness which was to blame for Strand’s demise. Strand seemed back to his true form in July, beating Ingvar Ericsson (not to be confused with Henry Eriksson !) with ease, 3:47.4 to 3:49.6, and then very much more narrowly, 3:47.0 to 3:47.2, for the Swedish title on 6 August in Stockholm, which would be the 2nd and 3rd fastest times of the year. Reiff chose to run the 5000 metres at the European Championships in late August in front of his home crowd in Brussels but was well beaten by the peerless Emil Zátopek, even losing 2nd place to Zátopek’s French runner-up de luxe, Alain Mimoun, in the last few metres. The next day Strand suffered an even worse fate in the 1500 metres final, as he lasted only 350 metres before stepping off the track, apparently overcome by nerves, even though the first lap was led in a restrained 61 seconds. Slijkhuis won in 3:47.2 from El Mabrouk, 3:47.8, and Nankeville, with a UK record 3:48.0. Sweden’s other entrant, Ingvar Ericsson, was 7th. Otherwise, Hansenne was 2nd to Britain’s John Parlett at 800 metres, with Bengtsson 4th for Sweden.

Strand announced his retirement after the Brussels debacle, but he soon changed his mind and planned another US visit in 1951, only for a knee operation to put him on crutches and abandon any ideas of competition that year or thereafter. Roberto Quercetani still had good reason to describe the 1500 meters/One mile as Sweden’s “parade events”as there were four Swedes in the fastest 10 of the year 1950 at 1500 metres and seven in the fastest 20. However, it would not have escaped the attention of “RLQ”, the arch statistical expert, that while Sweden had 13 men at 3:55.0 or better for the year the USA had 18 at the mile equivalent of 4:14.0. Many of those Americans would not be heard from much again, if at all, their careers abruptly terminated for lack of competitive opportunities after leaving college or university – does anyone remember Jim Newcomb, George Wade, Bill McGuire, Bob Karnes, Dean Pieper, Paul Mellor ? By contrast, Bob McMillen, Horace Ashenfelter and coaching guru Fred Wilt had much more to offer within the next few years.

Later historians would dwell inevitably on the matter of Strand’s temperament. Roberto Quercetani, in his “A History of Modern Track and Field Athletics”, published in the year 2000, concluded, “Strand, a great natural talent endowed with unique suppleness, was capable of following any pace and had an excellent finish. Nerves were his Achilles Heel; few runners would be as tense as he before any major commitment. In later years he would offer occasional glimpses of his greatness, but his psychological set-up became weaker and weaker. Even so, for several years he was the world’s outstanding 1500 metres man”.

Strand continued his “Sydsvenskan” newspaper career, promoted from the print room to the editorial office as a sports reporter, but apparently he disliked having to write about himself and moved to the archives department instead. He continued running and even racing for pleasure, untroubled by nerves, and was still capable of 1500 metres in near to four minutes at 50 years old.  In November 2003 he was seriously injured in a car accident and he died on the following 23 January, aged 82. Two years later the Swedish athletics writer, Karsten Klinteberg, made a study of Strand’s fallibilities for the UK history and statistics quarterly, “Track Stats”, and ably confirmed some of the anecdotes surrounding Strand’s career and refuted others as myths. Klinteberg provocatively wrote, “In an issue of ‘Track Stats’ earlier this year three facts were stated about Lennart Strand: (i) that he was a World record-holder at 1500 metres; (ii) that he once found that when he was about to race that he had forgotten his shorts, and (iii) that he was a concert pianist. Only the first statement is true”.

Confirming the impressions of the “World Sports” contributor, Lars-Henrik Ottosson, Klinteberg stated, “It is often said that Strand was nervous at big races, but he was also nervous at less important races and often predicted that he would run badly. Sometimes he was in the mood to compete and sometimes he was not – no matter whether or not the race was important. I have heard about and read more than once the story of how Strand once upon a time pulled off his tracksuit and found that he had forgotten his racing-shorts, but the truth, of course, is that it never happened. I believe that the World record race incident when Strand forgot his vest and borrowed one which was a few sizes too big from a team-mate inspired the story, and it is much more fun if someone forgets his trousers than if he forgets his shirt !”

On another occasion in 1950 Strand was not to be found when the 800 metres at the Swedish championships was about to start, and Klinteberg wrote, “An oft-told story about Strand is that he did not want to compete and instead hid inside a locker, but this is also false. Against his will, Strand had been entered in both the 800 metres and 1500 metres to gain points for his club, Malmö AI. He qualified without difficulty for the 800 metres final, and everyone was looking forward to a great duel between him and Ingvar Bengtsson, who had finished 5th in the 1948 Olympics, but there was no Strand at the starting-line. There was a delay of five minutes, and Strand’s desperate club officials rushed to the dressing-room. There they found Strand hiding behind a locker, and not in it. But the story,  of course,  becomes better if it is said he tried to hide inside. That evening Strand refused to dine with his team-mates, but the next day he  ran a marvellous race in the 1500 metres final in the World’s 2nd best time of the year”. 

The Swedish decade-long middle-distance running idyll was over with Strand’s leaving of it. In the 1952 Olympic 1500 metres Olle Åberg and Ingvar Ericsson were 7th and 8th. Ericsson was 4th in the 1954 European Championships and was eliminated in the 1956 Olympic heats, as was his team-mate, Dan Waern, but Waern was soon to raise Swedish hopes of a new Hägg or Strand in the making, with a 2nd place to Britain’s Brian Hewson in the 1958 Euopean Championships and 4th in Herb Elliott’s World record triumph at the 1960 Olympics. In 1957 Waern had run the sub-four-minute mile which had long eluded his fellow-countrymen, and had done so four times for good measure, beginning with 3:59.3 in Stockholm on the same day that Derek Ibbotson set his World record 3:57.2 in London, and ending with 3:58.5 in Malmö, with Strand no doubt among the admiring onlookers. Then in 1958-59 Waern had successive 1000 metres World records of 2:18.1, 2:18.0 and 2:17.8, and in 1960 he reduced the national 1500 metres reord to 3:38.6, but unfortunately he followed Hägg’s destiny rather too closely for comfort and was banned in 1961 for transgressing the oppressive amateurism laws.   

Sweden has won no medals for 1500 metres at the Olympic Games, World Championships or European Championships since 1960. 

 

    

 

   

 


Leave a Comment

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.