by Stan Eldon
More club races and a trip to Paignton in Devon for their Regatta Sports, where I ran 4:6 for the mile, but off thirty yards, so it was probably worth about 4:10 for the full mile. I was only there as a showpiece to draw in the crowds, and the weather was not good; it poured with rain. The crowd was less than normal, and the promoter was full of apologies that he could not give me the sort of money they had given the main attractions in previous years; I believe about £100. I think it was about then that I started to realise what went on in those happy shamateur days, if you were lucky. As my earnings were only about £7 a week, the £25 I received was still very acceptable. That was on the Wednesday, and on the Friday I was back in London running for Great Britain, again at three miles, against Poland. I had to be content with second place behind the top Polish runner Zimny. My time was 13:27.8.
A trip to Cheltenham followed for another one of those special handicap races over the one mile. This time I was off twenty-five yards, and finished seventh in 4:7.5. In these handicap races, although I was running around twenty-five yards less than the full distance, the other runners could be running off anything up to 300 yards less than the full distance, and most of them were just on grass tracks and not proper running tracks.
My last race in August was the usual London Fire Brigade meeting at White City, and this time I won the two mile race in 8:50, just getting the verdict over Bruce Tulloh, and we both did the same time.
Chapter Nine: Two Trips to Moscow
One of my main memories of that year was a trip to Moscow, with the first British athletics team to ever compete against the then Soviet Union. My event was to be the 5,000 metres, and my running partner for the first time was to be a new discovery who would be running his first international event, Bruce Tulloh from Portsmouth AC. I remember warming up in the underground track beneath the Lenin Stadium. I introduced Bruce to the two Russians we would be competing against, as I had met them previously in the European Championships the previous year. With very little verbal conversation but with body language, I think we gave them the message that we were very confident, although I am not sure whether they considered Bruce to be a threat as he looked like a young boy straight out of school, and I think they were even more surprised when he dared to line up without spikes. We had a plan and it was based on my liking for leading from the front. We would lead for alternative laps and run as fast as we could, the other one of us would follow and keep in close contact.
This worked well, and by halfway one of the Russians had dropped off the pace, but the other one was persistent and even tried to take the lead at the bell with one lap to go. I always had a fast finish and took off and built a lead all around that final lap, and Bruce did his bit by chasing me. My lap times were thirty seconds for the first 200 metres, then 66, 66.5, 66.5, 66, 69, 67, 70, 66, 68, 68, 69 and 60 seconds. We crossed the line in first and second place, with the noise of tens of thousands of Muscovites ringing in our ears. My winning time was a respectable 13:52.8. An official then grabbed me and said “Come with me” and I wondered what they wanted me for. I was taken into a small room at the back of the stands and I did not know what was going to happen next. I need not have worried, as all they wanted was for me to write my name so that they could engrave it in Russian on the very large medal I was to receive.
The food in Moscow was not good, and my diet before and after the race was soup and ice cream, both of which were excellent. I remember being asked if there was anything I would like by the hotel staff, and not realising the task I was setting them I said “oranges”. They sent someone off and it took him hours to find a few oranges from somewhere in Moscow, and I expect they were on the black market!
There was a big dispute between the British team management and the Russians about our flight from Moscow to our next destination, Helsinki in Finland. The Russians wanted to fly us home instead of on to Helsinki, but all the athletes went ‘on strike’ and we sat on our cases and sports bags in the foyer of the Moscow hotel, and refused to move while the management negotiated with the Russians. Eventually they relented and we flew off to Helsinki.
I had kept my training up, both in Moscow and when we arrived in the Finnish capital. The race against the Finns was on the Saturday, exactly one week after the Moscow race, and I knew I was still in good form. My partner was again Bruce Tulloh, who lined up in his bare feet yet again. I tried to persuade him to wear shoes as the red shale track of the 1952 Olympic Stadium was very coarse, and I knew it would play havoc with his feet. It did and I had a much larger winning margin than in the previous race. I led from the start to the finish, and Tulloh was in second place all the way from the third lap. My lap times were 66, 66, 67, 67, 67, 66.5, 69.5, 70, 68, 70, 69 and 62.4, and I won in 13:59.4. The last lap was slow for me, and Bruce ran a much faster lap of 58 seconds to finish in 14:19. He must have had quite a race to keep that second spot, because the better of the Finns, Soloranto, ran 58.6 for his last lap and finished just that .6 behind my team mate.
Because of my double win in good times, I was given the bonus of being selected to go with just a few athletes to the famous Turku track in southern Finland. Many top athletes had run on the famous Turku track and the Finns were great athletic supporters; they wanted me to break the world record of 13:35 held by Vladamir Kuts of the USSR. This was the track where Zatopek and many other top runners had set world best performances.
My race was to be the 5,000 metres again, and it was billed as world record attempt at the three miles and 5,000 metres, but when the opposition appeared I was dismayed. There were only two runners to race me and, not like these days, there was no pacemaker. The race started and it was soon clear that neither was going to give me any trouble. I rolled off the laps, but it was hard with no one pushing me, in fact it was more like a training run or time trial. One runner dropped out and the other was lapped, but I went through the three mile mark in 13:23.6 and finished the 5,000 metres in 13:47.8. The second runner T. Virtanen was over a lap behind in 14:59.4. My lap times had been 64.5, 64.5, 66.5, 65, 68.5, 65.5, 67, 67.5, 67, 69, 69, and for the last 600 metres 93.8 (last lap my usual sixty seconds). This was about twelve seconds or one second a lap outside V. Kuts’ world best for the distance. It was not a bad run, but I know I could have run very much faster with some real opposition. I did have the satisfaction of running the fastest ever 5,000 metres in Finland. Our select little team did quite well, with Dave Segal winning the 200 metres in 21.4, and John Wrighton second in 21.7. In the 400 metres the positions were reversed with Wrighton winning in 47.0, and Segal running a rare 400 metres, third in 47.6. The other member of the team was the late Mike Rawson, who had to be content with second place in the 800 metres.
After the race I had a sauna and sat out on the balcony of the sauna house to cool down. There were a couple of us and we were completely nude, but this did not stop girls climbing up onto the balcony with their autograph books for us to sign. So we sat there and let them all come, keeping our modesty covered with one hand and signing with the other.
It was then back home and a three mile race at Welwyn Garden City, where I was well beaten by Martin Hyman, better known for his 10,000 metre running; his time was 13:31.4, and my time for second place was only 13:46.6.
The season was not over, so it was back to the training ready for the three races I was to have in the space of four days at the beginning of October.
My next race was for London against Stockholm at the White City, and here I teamed up with old rival Gordon Pirie, and this was one occasion when he got the better of me. He outsprinted me at the finish, and my time was 13:25.6.
Two days later I was at the White City in Manchester, to run a two mile race for the newly-formed International Athletes Club against The Rest of Europe, organised by the Mancastrian Club and sponsored by the Evening Chronicle. According to newspaper reports I was the sensation of the evening, although not quite good enough to be awarded the Munich Tr
ophy. This trophy was presented by the National Union of Journalists in Manchester, in memory of the eight of their profession who died in the Munich air crash eighteen months earlier. The trophy went to shot-putter Arthur Rowe, for a distance of over sixty feet and repeatedly beating the Olympic qualifying standard. Most of the British athletes competing were beaten by overseas competition. The runners in the mile were especially criticized, including my conqueror from a few days earlier Pirie, who could only manage fourth in 4:9.5. The leading opposition in my two mile race was a strong East German, Herhard Hoenicke. According to one newspaper report after the race, I was tired and hungry. After my run at the White City, I had been on duty all next day from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and on the Friday I was working my beat again from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m., before dashing to Euston to catch the train to Manchester. I only just reached the stadium in time, and my only food all day was, I quote “two bobs’ worth of railway bread rolls”. I reached halfway in the race in 4:21.6 and was apparently looking very tired, the German then took over for three laps before the bell and took a ten yard lead into the final lap, before I challenged with the crowd shouting their heads off. I won the race in 8:47.2 and tired Hoenicke had to be content with only third place in 8:49.6. I like a quote about that final lap “His legs lost that rubbery look. His head, instead of rolling, stayed firmly forward. His eyes were glued to the tape. His reward was victory.” I learned another lesson about how athletics was changing. After my win I was invited by a well-known journalist to accompany him down to the ‘Gents’. I did wonder what was going on, especially when he sidled up to me and thrust something in my hand, it was a brown envelope which contained some cash. It was my pay for a good night’s work. I think it was £25 or so; not much by today’s standards but still the equivalent of three weeks’ pay for a policeman on the beat.
The very next day I was in Birmingham for the usual Birchfield end of season meeting, and I won the three miles in 14:7.6; pretty slow but I had a busy week.
In the October of that year, I had become the first Brit to notch up the Olympic qualifying times at both 5,000 and 10,000 metres. My best position on the international ranking lists was in the 5,000 metres with the 13:47.6.
In October I went with a small British squad to compete in a pre-Olympic meeting in Rome. I wanted to keep training, and the only way I could do this was to run around the streets of Rome. This was quite a hazardous experience that grabbed me even more headlines. All the top ranked 5,000 metre runners in the world were there, and I managed to get second place behind Zimny (Poland), with the man who topped the rankings well behind me. Not a very fast race, but a tactical one, and my time was 13:54.2. He led the first two kilometres, and then I took over before he regained control at four km. He took a small lead and I could not catch him, but I won the battle for second place with the famous Hungarian world record holder Sandor Iharos.
We stayed in a new hotel in Rome and had quite a weekend. The team included some of the star (and attractive) girls of British athletics at the time, including Mary Rand (the former Mary Bignal). I was sharing with another male athlete, and a couple of others joined us as well as Les Girls. We had a bit of a party, and romping about on the bed, someone pulled an electrical wire and threw the hotel into darkness. Next thing we had knocking on the door; the girls disappeared into the bathroom and I opened the door. The team management were not amused and told the spare fellows to return to their own rooms, not realising the girls were also in the room. I recall they locked us in and what happened after that I cannot remember.
It was round about this time, when I was living in my new police house at Earley, that I received a visit from a young man who lived in Caversham. He knocked on the door, introduced himself and asked me if I would attend his school and give a coaching course and training session. I instantly agreed and only realised my ‘mistake’ when a letter arrived from Downside Abbey at Bath - that was the school! I had not bothered to ask and had assumed it was in Reading. I took a train to Bath and went to the famous abbey and school to carry out my promise. I had a very enjoyable and unusual day. I gave the boys a talk and took them for a cross-country run. All the teaching staff were monks and the games master had a very good cellar of wine in the wall of the changing room. I had lunch with the abbot and staff; the Abbott of Downside was a well-known figure who appeared regularly on radio’s ‘Any Questions’. It was a very good lunch, but it was a little strange as they ate in complete silence, but told me before we entered the dining room that I could talk as much as I liked; my friends and family would say that this would not be difficult for me, but it is difficult to do if no one can respond; but I think I did chat a bit and they nodded and acknowledged. I got to know the lad who invited me quite well in future years as his mother lived near to my shop, and when he was about he used to call in and see me. Unfortunately he was an epileptic and would nearly always have an attack in the shop. The first time it happened we did not know what it was, and when he went down on the floor hitting his head on some weightlifting weights, and appearing totally unconscious, our first reaction was that he was dead. Fortunately he recovered on that occasion but it became a very regular occurrence after this, and even my customers got used to it. Sadly his illness got worse, and he eventually had an attack while on his bike and was killed by the accident that followed.
I paid a similar visit to Bradfield College (much nearer to home), during the track season as part of my training as a coach. International athletes were expected to do this, and I worked alongside a famous national coach of his day, John Le Masurier.
The following winter was not to be a good one for me. I had run the qualifying times for both my events, and selection for the Olympics in Rome should have been automatic, but I had problems with my stomach. Every time I trained I would have to rush to the loo. It was worse as I got into the spring and summer of 1960, and I had numerous trips to my doctor and samples went to the Royal Berkshire Hospital for analysis. There was a suspicion that it was related to diet, and at one stage tomatoes were blamed. Nothing conclusive was found and my running continued to suffer. Looking back, and now understanding my problem of diabetes, I do wonder if that was the problem I had then which very rapidly reduced my capability of running as I had in 1956 to 1959.
My first race after the Rome trip was a month later in the Farnham Cross-Country Relays in Surrey. It was a 6 × 1.5 mile relay, and I set the fastest time of the day 7:29.
Then it was back to the Rochester five mile in Kent, where I had set the record the previous year of 24:57.4. I was looking forward to this race, as I always like running on the road and I had trained well leading up to it, clocking seventy miles in the previous seven days. I was on the 2 p.m. - 10 p.m. shift, which was quite convenient, and meant I would get proper sleep in the week leading up to the race.
Things went wrong on the Friday, just as I was about to knock off duty, I got sent to a house on my beat where a man had been found dead in strange circumstances. It was difficult to tell whether it was suicide, accident or murder, and I had to seek higher authority before I could arrange to have the body removed. It started with the sergeant and ended up with calling out the detective superintendent after midnight. After much discussion, it was decided that it was an accident, even if a bizarre one, and so I had to arrange for the removal of the body and tidy up. I remember waiting in this cold house with the body for everyone to come, and I had to collect a lot of material found in the house which later ended up in Scotland Yard’s Black Museum. Needless to say it was a very late night and I did not get very long in bed, so it was not the best preparation for my race.
I went off to Rochester next day, or rather later the same day, and had a good run but was beaten into fourth place, but my time was 24:57, the same as my record of the previous year.
In December I was at the Sportsman of the Year Lunch at the Savoy in London. I had hopes of following in the footsteps of many athletes who had won the coveted
award since it was first presented in 1946, but it was not to be. The list of those at that function was like a sporting Who’s Who.
Just five days later I was at the other big sporting occasion, the BBC Sportsview Personality of the Year Award at the BBC Television Theatre, Shepherds Bush. I had been warned I was in the running, and on the night I was one of half a dozen who had major film presentations of their achievements, but I missed out again. I left the theatre with another disappointed sportsman Billy Wright, the England football captain; we travelled on the tube together and it was my only meeting with this gentleman of football.
Wins in a couple of club cross-country matches followed, before New Year’s Eve and my annual pilgrimage to Nos Galan at Mountain Ash in South Wales. This year a mile race had been introduced, and in the afternoon I lined up in Penrhiwceiber to run the mile. It was quite tough with climbs and twists and turns through the rows of terraced houses. The winner of this first race was Bruce Tulloh in 4:37, and I managed second place in 4:44, and it was a good warm-up for the real event at a few minutes to midnight. As always there was a huge crowd in Mountain Ash. Before the race I had the usual visit to the cottage hospital to meet the patients there; mostly pregnant women and a few miners. Then it was changing in the pithead baths, before lining up and waiting for the beacon to be lit by the ‘Mystery Runner’ to set us on our way. The Mystery Runner this year was Ken Norris. It was another great race, but this time I had to accept second best and Frank Salvat won the race, but my second place time was 18:49, just three seconds slower than my record time in 1958.
