Well,
here it is a beautiful summer’s day in Montreal, I haven't written anything in
this space for 14 days and I am trying to persuade myself I have writer’s
block. The only cure for that, if I have it, is to sit down and write
something, anything.
I tried that once when trying to
begin a novel: I wrote a sentence that went something like this: “Megan Rooney
should not have taken her 14-year-old son Beau with her when she went to visit
her husband Dave in prison.” For a couple of weeks I dragged out of that
unpromising beginning every ounce of drama that I could dream up. Along the way
an agent friend showed it to a publisher who said, “It’s terrific, carry
on.” It was at just about the same time
that I thought, “this shapeless mess needs a plot,” so for the next month I
worked on inserting a plot. Eventually,
everything completed, the same publisher said, “sorry, old man, you seem to
have lost the plot.” End of my novel-writing career. Six or eight of them, all
reposing to this day in drawers or cardboard boxes somewhere.
I am old and increasingly feeble now,
and I judge my physical and mental condition by how easy or hard it is to walk
through the McGill University campus to my favourite coffee shop at Peel and
Sherbrooke, a distance of about 1500 metres from my apartment. A month or so ago I could not even think if
making such a walk. I had been felled by an ancillary infection in addition to
my constant companion, the tumour, and
it really knocked the stuffing out of me. Fortunately, it responded quickly to
the prescribed antibiotics, and within a few days I was able to make it the
1500 metres again, able to bask in Café Castel’s delicious croissants and
pastries, and excellent coffee. But once again, something seems to be
descending upon me, and the walk is getting tougher to make with each passing
day.
I felt slightly offended when I read
on the Internet that my walk was estimated by GPS at 1300 metres. I had made my
estimate by counting the number of paces I took, and multiplying by the average
length of my stride (2.5 feet), which brought me out to a bit under 1500 metres.
I insist on that number because it has always been a
special number to me, ever since, when I was eight, Jack Lovelock of New
Zealand, a brainy, sightly-built young man, won the Berlin Olympics 1500 metre
title in the world record time of 3.47.8, demolishing by several yards a field of the
world’s greatest milers. Lovelock was a frail-looking chap at 5 ft 7 ins, and 134 pounds, a
Rhodes Scholar, and a great tactician over the mile or the metric mile. He plotted
his Olympic triumph four years ahead of the race, trained for it, and knew
exactly how to run it. Coming from a small, barely-visible British nation in the
distant Pacific, a nation as insignificant as Lovelock looked, he no doubt
played his small part, alongside Jesse Owens, the triumphant black sprinter
from the United States, in exploding Adolf Hitler’s dream to make the Olympics
an advertisement for the giant blonde Aryan youths who lay at the centre of his
racist philosophy.
Ever since
that moment, I have regarded the 1500 metre race as the greatest of all
achievements in sports, the one demanding the best intelligence, the best
physique, the best tactical sense, and have always followed the great runners
who have perfected the distance. After his Olympics win, Lovelock became like a
modern-day rock star in Britain, until he married an American woman, moved to
the United States, where he worked in a New York hospital, and at the end of
1949, subject to dizzy spells, fell from the platform before a New York subway
train in a gruesome accident, and was killed at the age of 40.
After
Lovelock, as a high school boy in New Zealand, although I never ran a race more
than half a mile myself, I was always delighted to hear of the impressive
Swedes Gunder Haegg and Arne Andersson, running
while the rest of Europe was in flames, as, in a series of remarkable races
they cut almost five seconds off Lovelock’s world record, and brought the time
for the 1500 metres down to 3.43, and for the mile down to 4:01.4.
Although I, being a youth steeped in
anti-imperialism, never paid much attention to the English, I have to admit the
English have a notable record in this field. I was never seized with admiration
for Sydney Wooderson, a runner who, like Lovelock, looked kind of frail, and
who failed in the heats to qualify for the 1936 Berlin final won by Lovelock.
He continued to break records in later years, and he ended his career in 1945
by taking on Haegg and Andersson in London before a crowd of 54,000 people,
hungry to watch international competition.
He was by no means as fit as the impressive Swedes, who combined to burn
him off during the early laps, and demolished him in the straight. Among the
eager crowd were a Mr. Bannister and his 15-year-old son Roger, for whom, from
that day, Wooderson became a hero “because,” as Bannister later wrote, “of his
attitude towards running, as much as for his feats in doing so.”A tiny man of 5
ft 6 ins and weighing 123 pounds, Wooderson lived on until dying at the age of
92 in 2006.
Next up on the English list came that
same Roger Bannister, who is immortalized for having been the first to break
four minutes for the mile. He did this in Oxford on May 6, 1954, but his record
was broken 46 days later when the Australian John Landy ran 3.57.9 in Finland. The two men then entered into a stirring
rivalry culminating in the mile at the 1954 Commonwealth Games in Vancouver
when, in the so-called Mile of the Century, Bannister overtook Landy in the back
straight and won in 3.58.8, with Landy finishing two-tenths of a second behind
him. It was the first time two men had broken the four-minute mile in the same
race. The race is also famous because Landy looked over his left shoulder for
the competition just as Bannister was surging past him on his right shoulder. A
statue of this moment was later erected, and Landy commented: "While Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt for looking
back, I am probably the only one ever turned into bronze for looking
back."
Landy --- who is famous in Australia
for an occasion on which he stopped to help a runner who had been spiked, then
carried on to catch and beat the rest of the field, which is widely regarded as the premier act of sportsmanship
in Australian history--- went on to become a politician holding various public
offices, including, for a time, as governor of Victoria. He is still alive,
aged 89, living in Melbourne.
I cannot include all great runners in
my lexicon. Next for me came the amazing Aussie
--- in my opinion the greatest of them all, for he retired undefeated,
at the age of 22 --- Herb Elliott. He
won the 1500 metres at the 1960 Rome Olympics in world record time, beating the
best in the world by three seconds --- almost the length of a football field.
(I exaggerate slightly). Elliott’s time was 3.35.6. By the time he retired he
had broken the four-minute mile 17 times. Between 1957, when he was 19, and 1962,
when he ran his last race, he dominated middle-distance running like no one
else before him or since.
The only one of these great runners I
ever saw personally, Peter Snell, won the 1960 Olympic 800 metres in 1. 46.3, and in the same year he
took the mile record down to 3.53.4. He was a New Zealand boy, skilled at all
games, who never thought of being a runner until, at the age of 19, he happened
to meet the coach Arthur Lydiard, who persuaded him he had the strength to become a
world champion, and he set out on the
task. Lydiard, who literally invented the modern craze for jogging that nowadays
infects everyone down to the most overweight and over-stuffed businessman, told
Snell he had to build his strength by running 100 miles a week, which he set
out loyally to do. The athlete Snell I saw in London running after the 1960 Rome
Olympics was not particularly enchanting to watch. He simply sat in the pack until
the straight and then surged past them, making all his opponents look as if
they were jogging. His career lasted
from 1960 to 1965, when he retired. He became a prominent scientist and lives, now
80, in Texas.
He became part of this notable
history of wonderful Antipodean middle-distance runners, who, in recent years,
seem to have been more or less eclipsed, especially by the Africans. I remember when I was a young athlete my coaches
used to tell me black men were good at sprints, but useless over the longer
distances. Those coaches, who had never
seen a black man in their lives, should
see middle-distance races of the present day, in which the presence of a white
person is notable. It seems to me that it was colonialism in all its glories
that was holding them back. Once feeed of that, they have surged and become
unbeatable.
Meanwhile, in the 1970s, England
produced at the same time a curiously contrasting pair, Steve Ovett, a working
class kind of guy, and Sebastian Coe, a bit of a toff who later became a
Conservative member of Parliament, was elevated to the peerage, and now, as
Lord Coe, is president of the Inernational Association of Atheletics
Federations (IAAF), and is therefore leading the governing body of athletics
world-wide.
John Walker of New Zealand, in the
early 970s smashed many of the middle-distance records, and before he
retired --- he was still running over
the age of 40--- he had run more than 100 four-minute miles. He was later
overtaken by Steve Ovett, but his place in the history books is secure as the
first man to beat 3.50 for the mile, more than 10 seconds better than
Bannister’s epoch-making time.
Since then, the times have been
smashed by two North Africans, Noureddine Morceli, of Algeria, in 1997 (3.27.37), followed by the present
holder, Hicham El Guerrouj, of Morocco, in 1999
recording 3.26 for the 1500 metres, a record that has now stood for 20
years.
Well, these are the reasons I stick
to my nomination of my morning’s walk for coffee as over a 1500 metre course.
It is a pleasant walk, there are seats along the way that I can take when I
feel too tired, as I often do, and I can reflect on how many other remarkable
people have preceded me over the distance.
I guess I have broken my imaginary
writer’s block as well.
Well, wot the hell wot the hell,
toujours gai, toujours gai….
(With acknowledgements to
Wikipedia).
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