Summer Olympics - the Gift of the Greeks

In May 1997 I embarked on a coach tour of Southern Greece, taking in Athens and the Peloponnese. The Parthenon, Delphi and the ancient Mycenae fortress were all amazing places but possibly the most memorable activity of the whole week was joining a rag-tag bunch of international tourists in an impromptu sprint in the original athletics stadium at Olympia. Why is that? I’m no runner (although I did finish second), nor even a scholar of Ancient Greek social history. No, it’s the aura of the Olympic Games which has seeped into my bones. The very first Games took place on that very spot in 776BC and, although you’ll be relieved to know we weren’t channelling the spirit of those pioneering Spartans, Corinthians and Arcadians by running naked, for just a few seconds we were part of a fantastic tradition.

There is something so fundamental, primitive even, about man (and then it was only men, of course) seeking to run faster, throw further or jump higher than anybody else with no financial inducement. How things have changed. Amateurism did persist until the 1980s, although under-the-table payments were surely paid to the top athletes for many years. The gruesome spectre of performance-enhancing drugs showed its ugly face in Seoul then crass commercialism and vulgar nationalism by NBC spoilt the Atlanta Games of 1996. At least we could rely on the BBC to be an impeccably impartial host broadcaster in 2012. Er, no. That was the one disappointment of that wonderful fortnight, of which more later.

Like their classical Greek counterparts, the modern Olympic Games have rooted themselves deep in my own psyche. It’s one of the few sporting occasions which has sustained my considerable interest over fifty years. It helps having the BBC retain its broadcasting rights free to the masses but there’s something about the world coming together every four years, competing in a mix of sports in a kaleidoscope of flags and costumes in and around one city. I can do without the extravagant opening ceremony but the lighting of the flame would stir my blood in anticipation of a true festival of sport. Similarly I would find the extinguishing of said flame a fortnight or so later as an incredibly moving and emotional image, symbolising far more than the imminent flights home of a few thousand men and women in tracksuits. It represented the fact that I’d have to wait four years before I could next enjoy the Games. Like Misha the Moscow mascot in 1980 I would unashamedly shed a tear.

The first I remember watching on what must have been blurry black-and-white television was the Mexico City event in 1968. There was David Hemery’s 400m hurdles world record, Bob Beamon’s phenomenal long jump, Lilian Board’s 400m battles with Colette Besson and Chris Finnegan winning a boxing gold for Britain, and I lapped it up.

It hasn’t all been centred on the fortunes of what is now branded Team GB. Just as well because, before the modern fetish for lavishly state-funded Olympic glory-hunting, every British medal was savoured like a cup of water in the Sahara. In my lifetime, all the way up to Sydney in 2000, we would reap at best only a handful of golds. While I enjoyed witnessing our star athletes standing proudly on the podium, the Olympic also provided fleeting fame for those whose sports were just as obscure as their names. For every Mary Peters or David Wilkie winning races live on our screens, there would be a clip of an army officer wielding a skinny sword as part of Modern Pentathlon or another posh bloke in a red jacket completing a clee-ah rahnd on a horse or some old boy under a hat firing a rifle, shaking hands with an official and shuffling off into immortality within the Trap shooting fraternity.

For just a few short weeks, we were whisked away into weird and wonderful worlds of judo, fencing and archery. Most of them, if you started devising an Olympic programme from scratch, would never make the cut. Regardless, I would eagerly and dutifully do my utmost to record all the results in my increasingly tatty Radio Times pull-out. No reliance on Google searches or Wikipedia back then! For the 1976 event I even bought a paperback book into which I’d squeeze their names and nationalities in my finest microscopic capital letters. Athletics, swimming and boxing were filled pretty comprehensively while sections for sports such as Wrestling tended to be riddled with holes. They would probably be dominated by the Soviet Union and East Germany anyway. No Brits, so zero coverage.

Some little-known sports suddenly became hugely popular in this country, not necessarily linked to British success. Gymnastics in the early Seventies may have been the fiefdoms of the Eastern Bloc and, in the men’s events, Japan but in ’72 Olga Korbut’s sweet smile and mini-pigtails delighted the nation. In 2016 the sport has been opened up to allow 16 countries a share of the medals on offer, from the USA and Russia down to Spain and Switzerland. Even Britain has grabbed some memorable golds. In those dark days of giant empires and shy impoverished continents, only about 120 countries took part but that tally has almost doubled. The splintering of the Soviet Union, opening up of China and the American universities developing talents from previously little-known African republics and Caribbean islands have all helped make the Olympics truly global in both participation and opportunities for bringing home a medal or two.

Politics began to interfere with sometimes deadly consequences, as in Munich. Grim boycotts cast a dismal shadow over the 1980 and 1984 Games in particular as the Cold War protagonists embarked on last-ditch displays of willy-waving before Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika hastened what I hope will prove the end of crazy nuclear posturing, Trump and Putin notwithstanding.

All the while, the sport continued to delight, even of some of the world’s best were missing from the biggest stage. Professionalism may have heralded lucrative Diamond Leagues and other world championships but an Olympic gold remains the pinnacle of sporting achievement. That’s why, in the past few decades, millionaire golfers and tennis players seem happy to set aside a few weeks in their money-making schedules to helicopter into the Olympic village. Some, like Andy Murray or Justin Rose, might even expend enough energy to actually win. While I welcome the introduction to the Olympic family sports such as triathlon, BMX, Taekwondo and Beach volleyball, I remain a sceptic about the fit of long-standing professional favourites. What I will make of Sport Climbing or Karate at Tokyo next year is anyone’s guess.

Athletics - the Silver Stars

It wasn’t just the supreme athletes or plucky Brits who won my heart. There are three who spring to mind as competitors who always seemed to be on the screen but rarely in the gold medal position, tears streaming to their respective national anthems.

The first was Irena Szewinska. Actually she did win a lot of titles, from sprint relay, 200m and 400m to long jump, although mostly before I took an interest in her sport. However, by the Seventies, she seemed to fall below the radar, probably because she was from Poland rather than the USA, USSR or East Germany. In a fifteen-year senior career she topped the global rankings more than once in four different events, holding world records galore. And yet for some reason I remember her as a battling bronze medallist rather than the frequent champion she really was, maybe because that was how her championship career ended in 1978.

Nevertheless, for a bronze collection, surely no athlete can compare with Merlene Ottey. In the early Eighties, Jamaica was not the powerhouse of athletics that it is now, and the young Ottey bloomed like an exotic flower amidst the shorter, stockier runners from the USA or Eastern Europe. It’s just that she rarely finished first. I’m sure she treasures her three World Championship gold medals but it must be galling to take part in seven Olympic Games, yet bring home three silvers, six bronzes and no golds. She was particularly unlucky to lose the 100 metres final at Atlanta to Gail Devers by 0.005 seconds. Crap or what?! In the 200, she was narrowly overhauled by the Frenchwoman Perec. Merlene’s final Olympic medal – bronze again – was awarded nine years after the race was held at Sydney, after serial steroid abuser Marion Jones was finally stripped of her title, and Ottey upgraded.

Sadly, like many top sporting personalities, the Jamaican was a bit of a diva in her later years. She fell out with her association after finishing fourth in the national trials, which meant she failed to make the individual team. Emigrating to Slovenia for some reason, she continued to compete internationally and even ran the sprint relay in the 2012 Europeans at the age of 52! No chance of a podium finish but when athletics is in the blood it must be hard to hang up your spikes.

Frankie Fredericks wasn’t blessed with such a lengthy career but he packed a load of action into his decade at the top of his game. However, he won my heart by winning four silvers at the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics. Representing Namibia, relay success was never on the cards but for several years he was incredibly consistent in the individual sprint events, regularly breaking the 10-second barrier in the 100m and 20 seconds for the 200m. At the 1996 Games, it took world record performances by Donovan Bailey and Michael Johnson to deprive Fredericks of the golds he surely deserved. What endeared him to me was his sunny disposition, in spite of what the fates – and his rivals – dealt him.

It was therefore especially rewarding to watch him run the 200 at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. I was fortunate to have been invited, as part of the BBC Nations & Regions management team, to Manchester for a couple of sessions, including one memorable evening of athletics finals in the new stadium, now familiar as the Etihad. Although our seats were high above the back straight rather than in the expensive positions near the finishing line, I was struck by the sheer speed of the sprinters, something you can’t appreciate simply by watching on TV.

There were many great moments to treasure from my first and only first-hand experience of top-class athletics. The wonderful Maria Mutola won the 800, England’s Chris Rawlinson grabbed the 400m hurdles and Bahamian Debbie Ferguson took the women’s 200 at a canter. However, it was Frankie Fredericks’ triumph which was my highlight. Much of the crowd were clearly disappointed that the English duo of Campbell and Devonish had been beaten but I make no apologies for cheering the Namibian.

2002 came several years too early to witness the performance and personality of probably the greatest and most charismatic athlete of my lifetime, perhaps ever. I’m talking, of course, about the incomparable Usain Bolt. Lucky for Frankie Fredericks that he didn’t find himself up against the Jamaican but, for all the splendid efforts of Rudisha, Ennis, Bekele, Dibaba, Felix, Semenya et al, the entire sport owes a massive debt to Bolt. It wasn’t just his jaunty mugging for the cameras before the start or the unique ‘lightning’ pose afterwards. He not only held audiences in the palms of his hands; he held all his competitors in his pocket. He didn’t just win the major finals; he did so by smashing world records and slowing down at the tape, just to rub it in. 

However, while those races at Beijing, London and the world champs of Berlin and Moscow were undeniably thrilling, my over-riding memory of Bolt the champion was from the Rio Olympics.  Gatlin gained revenge a year later, inflicting Bolt’s first championship defeat for a decade, and when Usain pulled up injured in the relay, the fairytale script was ripped into tiny pieces. It wasn’t just the shock of defeat; it signified the realisation that the Jamaican wasn’t invincible after all. The cult of Bolt was over, and the curtain had been drawn over an entire era of athletics.

There will be new stars, of course. World records will continue to be broken and there’ll be more sensational races and competitions. I hope there’ll be no repeat of the Zola Budd palaver, when the Thatcher government literally bought a young white South African middle-distance runner with the express purpose of winning gold at the 1984 Olympics. History showed that neither she, nor the LA favourite Mary Decker Slaney, triumphed in the much-hyped 3000 metres so even in the darkest of hours it’s encouraging that sport can triumph.

One,Two and Three-Lap Wonders

As a child, athletics was one of the few sports where I would get to see black faces on screen. Boxing was another, and those Bank Holiday Harlem Globetrotters basketball specials featuring the incomparable Meadowlark Lemon, but Olympics and other European meetings worked wonders at bringing multiculturalism to a land where racism remained rife. For example, I remember warming to the likes of Kenyan runner Kip Keino, Tanzanian miler Filbert Bayi and Ugandan hurdler John Akii-Bua.

In the Seventies, I remember when the American 400 metre hurdler Ed Moses was literally unbeatable for almost ten years. It’s astonishing to think that between August 1977 and June 1987, he won 122 consecutive races. Imagine what it must have been like for other athletes lining up against him week in week out, knowing before the start that they had zero chance of success. I tend to nurture a natural antipathy towards American athletes who in the UK seem to be accorded far more glory and publicity than they merit. Nevertheless, in Moses’ case, it was thoroughly justified. Unlike runners like Carl Lewis, he was so cool and dignified about it, taking success in his (very long) stride.

I was less enthusiastic about Michael Johnson in the 1990s. I find it hard to like anyone who feels compelled to run in gold shoes but when it came to watching him run the 200 and 400 metres, opening up impossibly vast gaps ahead of the field with that weird upright stance and choppy stride, even I had to admire the man. 

The sport was also a shop window for sportsmen from the Communist world, including sprinters like Valeri Borzov and Renate Stecher from the USSR and East Germany. Occasionally an athlete from Cuba would take centre stage and I remember being struck by Alberto Juantorena at the Montreal Olympics. With a frizz seemingly as wide as his lane, he possessed a power and giant stride which nobody else could match. Unusually he took gold in the 400 and 800 metres, a rare combination.  Sadly injuries restricted his opportunities thereafter but he was an instant hit for this fifteen year-old.

He wasn’t in top condition to defend his titles in Moscow four years later but by then all eyes – especially those in Britain – were on two of our own middle-distance men. It says much about the instant gratification of modern audiences that the 100m dash has taken over. Once all the tendon-stretching tension and grimacing on the blocks end in hush, ten seconds is all it takes to release a rampant rush of energy and adrenalin for the runners and spectators alike. However, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the so-called ‘Blue Riband’ event was the 1500 metres. While most sports events span a few hours, days even, athletics is capable of squeezing so much into such a short time. Like a perfect pop song, three and a half minutes was enough to incorporate distinct phases: cagey build-up, acceleration (and maybe a few dramatic trips), the promise on the final bend and the heart-pounding, leg-trembling finale.

Between 1979 and 1984, not only over 1500 metres but also the 800, Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett made for great box office, not only in the UK but around the world. In July and August each year, they would treat us to tantalising attempts on world records, the paying spectators bashing the advertising boards with abandon, and raising the roof to inspire the Brits to go faster and faster.

The problem was that they would always avoid each other on the circuit. The summer of 1981 was particularly memorable when it came to middle-distance running. Amidst the frenzy surrounding Botham’s Ashes by day, the August evenings would feature some incredible races around Europe. Coe won the European Cup 800m for Britain in Zagreb then came an extraordinary sequence of mile records. Ovett owned the best time until Seb broke the world record at the Weltklasse in Zurich. A week later Ovett, on his own throughout the last lap, grabbed it back in Koblenz. Two days later, it was Coe’s turn, this time in Brussels. Who knows how quick he and Ovett would have run had they gone head-to-head?

At the time, the two Brits also held the world records for 800m (Coe) and 1500m (Ovett) as well as various minor distances like 1000m and Coe’s time of 1;41.73 stood for sixteen years, those figures engrained on my brain for all time. Ovett wasn’t the last British record holder, though. That achievement went to Steve Cram, although his ‘metric mile’ standard lasted a mere six weeks in 1985. Peter Elliott and Tom McKean also flew the flag with some success into the Nineties but by this time the middle-distance axis had already shifted decisively towards Africa, especially the north. Throughout the Eighties and Nineties, Said Aouita, Noureddine Morceli and the astonishing Hicham El Guerrouj dominated the middle distances and the latter’s 1500 metres time of 3 minutes 26 has survived almost two decades. The latter was as supreme in major competitions as the IAAF Golden League and is one of the few whose reputation can match those of Coe and Ovett who so lit up my summers for several years.

Sex, Drugs, Hop and Pole

Before Marathon Fever struck Britain, some of the most famous sportswomen on the planet were athletes. Apart from a few plucky Brits, most seemed to hail from Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union and East Germany dominated, and I would watch the likes of Renate Stecher, then later sprinter/long-jumper Heike Drechsler, sprinter Marlies Gohr and javelin thrower Petra Felke reigning supreme in their dark blue vests. Marita Koch and the burly permed figure of Czechoslovakia’s Jarmila Kratochvilova enjoyed some fascinating tussles throughout the early Eighties, setting world records in the 400 metres and 800 metres, respectively, which have yet to be broken.

They were almost certainly achieved with the aid of steroids provided by national coaches, without the knowledge of the athletes themselves but, as we know, the so-called Western world cannot cast the first stone when it comes to allegations of cheating. From Marion Jones to Justin Gatlin, Linford Christie to Dwain Chambers, the rogues gallery is formidable, and they were just the ones who were caught and/or publicly identified.

At the time, I just lapped up the excitement of the sport. Nobody had ‘I am a cheat’ on their vest, so I just took the competition at face value. It wasn’t only on the track where the great contests took place. The field events tend to be used as fillers on TV, recorded throws and jumps being squeezed in between the ballyhoo of the better-known runners. However, occasionally they would provide as much, if not more drama than anything else I’ve witnessed in an athletics arena.

There were some tremendous battles with the javelin in the Eighties and Nineties, often involving Brits such as Tessa Sanderson, Fatima Whitbread and Steve Backley. I would enjoy watching the cameras follow the spear flying through the air and use my copious reserves of expertise (!) to guess how far it would go. Sadly for Backley it would never quite sail far enough.

Perhaps the most memorable field competitions were between the Russian pole vaulters Svetlana Feofanova and Yelena Isinbayeva in the 2000s. I forget whether it was in the 2004 or 2008 Olympics or a subsequent world championships but their duel to the finish was as electrifying as anything on the track. Thank goodness the BBC director stuck with it. The two women were at the time by far the best vaulters in the world, swapping world records consistently. I tended to support Feofanova, probably because she was the shorter and a fellow redhead. However, she appeared the moodier of the two and, when it mattered, tended to lose out to her great rival. For about five years, Isinbayeva ruled the roost and retired having set no fewer than 28 indoor or outdoor world records, and was one of those athletes who always demanded your attention.

While I often pledge my allegiance to the plucky also-rans or nearly-men and women, there is something special about watching undisputed masters of their event do their stuff. It’s true of many sports but probably athletics most of all. Before Isinbayeva, it was Sergey Bubka who was the Prince of the Pole (I made that one up); he was seemingly invincible for more than a decade, winning golds at each of the first six World champs either as part of the Soviet Union or Ukraine. His detractors criticised him for maximising his earnings by breaking world records a centimetre at a time, garnering WR bonuses at every event. He was one of the few field event stars to be true ‘box office’. Meet organisers may have needed to cough up extra cash but spectators and TV viewers like me would lap up the drama as he would plant the pole, leap and twist towards the bar. Would he dislodge it or clear once more? It was usually the latter. Sadly he seemed to suffer the curse of the five rings, taking only one Olympic crown, in 1988. However, his 35 world records are testament to his enduring supremacy.

Sprinters never seem to get on with each other. At least that’s how it comes across on screen. Maybe, as with boxers, it’s just showbiz hype, inventing hatred and aggression as a ruse to get the punters and, consequently, sponsors and broadcasters to splash the cash. Perhaps being a 100-metres runner is a more solitary experience, requiring mental strength to zone out of everyone else to focus. What I particularly like but watching field events is that competitors seem to generally like and support each other. Whether it’s big burly shot putters offering handshakes and hugs when someone produces a whopper, jumpers leading the audience handclaps for their opponents or those collective end-of event laps of honour by heptathletes or decathletes, there’s something life-affirming about sportsmen and women setting aside their intense rivalries to be decent human beings.

Javelin is one event where this always seems to happen. Even when the Czech thrower Jan Zelezny was taking the event to new heights – and lengths – the dozen men contesting championship or circuit finals seemed to get on, even when they all knew that, even when he seemed down and out, Zelezny was capable of producing something spectacular to grab victory. He wasn’t invincible in the manner of Moses or Bubka, but there was something inspirational in the way the mild-mannered Czech – tall but not disconcertingly muscular – went about his business so efficiently. Throughout the Nineties I willed Britain’s Steve Backley to go one better, even by a solitary centimetre, and claim that elusive global gold, but it never came. He did briefly hold the world record and regularly topped the podium in European and Commonwealth championships, but in the Worlds and Olympics it was usually Zelezny who emerged on top. 

Then there was Jonathan Edwards. He was British, fresh-faced and articulate, his event was one of my favourites - triple jump - and for several seasons he was one of the most thrilling athletes to watch. Though not as consistently dominant as those mentioned above, when he finally made his breakthrough at the age of 27, he made a difficult, very technical event look ridiculously simple. I shall never forget the World Championships in Gothenburg. In his first jump, he became the first man legally to break the 18 metres barrier. In the second, he went even further, to 18.29 metres. In each of his three sections Edwards looked absolutely perfect; he seemed to float over the runway, to defy gravity. In 2002 he held all four possible ‘major’ titles and retired the following year. Others have threatened his world record since but none have either surpassed it or come close to matching that free-flowing technique.

Sprints and Marathons

My earliest recollection of two runners involved in a breathtaking dash for the tape was the Mexico City women’s 400 metres final. Britain’s young blonde favourite, Lilian Board, was overhauled on the line by French rival Colette Besson, long dark hair flowing behind her, and I distinctly remember the excitement. I don’t recall being disappointed at the result; it had been the finish which thrilled me, not the name of the winner.  A year later, Board gained revenge in another tremendous climax, this time in the European Championships 4x400m relay.  The news of her cancer diagnosis the following year was headline news and I was as sad as anyone when she died in December 1970. She was only 22. I’ve only just discovered that Besson, too, fell to cancer, in 2005.

There have been many other absorbing relay finals over the years. As a means of concluding championships on a high, relays are nigh perfect, although they don’t necessarily guarantee close finishes. For more years than I care to remember, the Americans would spoil the occasion by taking dominance to new levels, especially the women. However, in men’s 4 by 4 races, the Soviet Union, Bahamas, Nigeria and Jamaica have done their bit to give me something to cheer. Nevertheless perhaps some of the most enthralling relays I can remember have involved the Brits.

There may have been closer finishes but for sheer edge-of-the-seat-scream-at-the-screen drama, few can match the 1991 World championships 4x400 metres and the 2004 Olympic sprint finals. The former, hosted by Tokyo, followed a feast of fast times aided by a super-duper track and almost certainly a pantechnicon full of steroids. Ben Johnson may have been banished following the 1988 Olympic disqualification but other drugs cheats like Carl Lewis and Dennis Mitchell had been allowed to continue, and Lewis duly broke the world 100m record. He was also involved in a tremendous battle for the long jump title, which was snatched from his grasp by Mike Powell, who had to overhaul Beamon’s ‘unbeatable’ world record to do so.

Lewis was also a member of the American men’s sprint quartet set a new world mark shortly before the 400 metre event drew down the curtain on the men’s events in the championships. The Yanks were hot favourites as usual but in Roger Black we had the individual silver medallist and three others who had the potential to see off the rest. Even commentator David Coleman was surprised to see Black lining up in the blocks on the opening leg instead of his normal role as ‘anchor’. It proved a master-stroke. Black, then Derek Redmond and John Regis held on to the Americans all the way to the final handover. Hurdler Kriss Akabusi stayed on Antonio Pettigrew’s shoulder until, on the last straight, somehow found the legs to overtake and breast the tape first. The look on Akabusi’s face (and that unforgettable laugh) was priceless, and the Americans seemed stunned. Hardly surprising, given it would be their only defeat in a twelve-year period. For that reason alone, those three minutes were pure sporting gold but for a British foursome to apply the coup de grace made it extra special.

Fast forward thirteen years to the Athens Olympics, and the Men’s 4x100 relay. Once again, the Yanks were expected to win but, despite Dwain Chambers being banned for life because of illegal performance-boosting drug intake and none of our sprint stars reaching an individual final, Britain had high hopes for silver. If only we could avoid another bungled baton change! Mind you, we’d skirted with another disqualification in the semis and then, spirits pumped by Kelly Holmes’ 1500m success, when the starter’s gun fired, Jason Gardener was too quick out of his blocks. These days we would have been shown the red flag and kicked out. In 2004, you had a second chance, and Britain took it. Luckily it all came together late that evening.

This time, it was the Americans who bodged a couple of changeovers. Gardener, Darren Campbell and Marlon Devonish were up there with USA and Nigeria but Maurice Greene would surely prevail on the last leg. He didn’t. In what proved to be his finest hour, 21 year-old Mark Lewis-Francis somehow held on to win by the thickness of a vest, or 0.01 seconds. Weeks later, I skived off work for an hour to watch the Olympic and Paralympic parade pass along Oxford Street, the highlight for me being the glistening golds and gleaming smiles being worn by the relay squad who had pulled off such a thrilling victory in Athens.

In more recent years, it has been the joyful Jamaicans, men and women, who have been the scourge of Team USA and the source of such delight for me. When Usain Bolt brought them home for a new world record in London, 2012, the whole world outside the States erupted with joy. More on Mr Bolt later…

It hasn’t all been about the relays, of course. I recall one Friday evening towards the end of the school year in July 1973 when I watched the shambling, shaggy-haired, moustachioed figure of David Bedford break the world 10,000 metres record at Crystal Palace. That was the first time I felt compelled to go straight outside and run around the close. At 12 years old, I’d no facial hair but for a few glorious minutes I felt like Britain’s new long distance superstar. For all his efforts, he never managed a global title and was eclipsed by Brendan Foster in the medals stakes. That record, too, has been eclipsed many times. Obliterated. By well over a minute! However, for three years, Bedford’s record stood proud.

In the past two decades, the rise to long-distance supremacy of African-born athletes has changed the world order completely, giving us new heroes like Mo Farah and the little Ethiopian maestro Haile Gebrselassie not only on the track but also on the streets. Until the first London Marathon was organised in 1981, I paid little attention to the grand-daddy of all distances In those days, when at university, I used to buy The Observer on Sundays and the ‘paper really went to town on the event. Founder and journalist Chris Brasher would set out training plans each week for the intrepid few who had booked a place and I would wonder what it would be like to have a go myself.

Of course, I decided that slogging around Billericay in the cold, wet winter months was too arduous a training regime so I’ve never ventured into the world of fartlek (I love that word – it’s a sequence of sprint-jog-sprint-jog), hitting ‘the wall’, being overtaken by a rhinoceros or donning a cape of silver foil. Instead, like just about every other athletic event, I would in the Eighties and Nineties resolve to get up a bit earlier than usual on the requisite April Sunday morning to enjoy the atmosphere on TV.

It’s not just London; there are many top city marathons taking place each year, from Berlin to New York, but for us Brits, London’s is the Marathon. It’s quaint to recall the moment when Dick Beardsley and Inge Simonsen linked hands to cross the line together in that first men’s elite race. Britain’s own, Joyce Smith, also won the women’s event that year, at the age of 43. We had some top-class marathon runners in the Eighties. Steve Jones’ winning time from 1985 endured as a British record for 33 years before being improved by Mo Farah in 2018.

The Marathon was also the first opportunity to see women long-distance runners in action. Until the Eighties, the fairer sex were deemed by the IOC and IAAF too fragile to participate in anything longer than 1500 metres but there was nothing weak and feeble about the Norwegian pair of Grete Waitz and Ingrid Kristiansen who won just about everything in that decade. A couple of times I made the trip up to Liverpool Street, joining the crowds near the Tower to cheer the elite and fund-raising so-called ‘fun’ runners. I remember Kristiansen looking remarkably small surrounded by male lanky beanpoles who struggled to keep pace with her. Boy, was she tough! She won world titles on track, streets and cross-country, and was also a Norwegian ski champion, no mean feat.

For me, the London Marathon no longer has sufficient appeal for me to sit and watch. Not since Paula Radcliffe’s heyday have I made any real effort to watch, perhaps hanging on towards midday in an attempt to pick out a friend or work colleague amidst the multi-coloured hordes negotiating the cobbles around the Cutty Sark or shuffling across Tower Bridge. I wouldn’t want to ’diss’ the event. It remains a magnet for athletes around the world, with enormous prize money to attract the big names from Kenya and Ethiopia and the cache for 40,000 ‘ordinary’ runners to put their bodies on the line, whether for pride or charity. I salute them all.