The Perfect Distance

by Pat Butcher

  For those people who could take that sort of ‘first-degree’ personality, it wasn’t necessarily a problem. Dave Cocksedge was one of the first ‘outsiders’ regularly to visit the Ovett household, from the early seventies. He remembers, ‘She was prickly, a very prickly woman, she could take offence just like that, but I liked Gay, she was nice. I always got on quite well with her.’

  Gay and Steve were very close, possibly because they were so close to each other in age. Cocksedge said that when the teenaged Ovett came to stay with him in south London, ‘He would call Gay every day. They’d spend hours on the phone; they were real pals.’

  Whether the early years that Ovett had spent with his grandparents had instilled some sense of guilt in Gay, that she thought she had not taken as much care of her infant son as she should have done, no one can know, and in any case Ovett says he saw her virtually every day when he lived with Pop. But when he was back living with his parents, Gay made sure everything was right, to a degree that outsiders saw as almost suffocating.

  Neil Wilson was one of the few journalists ever to get past the front door of the Ovett household. It was in 1973, before the press boycott, and Wilson had recently travelled back from Germany with Ovett, after the seventeen-year-old had won the European Junior 800 metres title. That performance had earned Ovett the British Athletics Writers’ Association Junior Athlete award, and Wilson, who lived in Brighton, was going to give Ovett a lift to the annual dinner and presentation in London. Wilson had children not much younger than Ovett, but detected a very different atmosphere to his own household when he went to the Ovetts’ home in Harrington Villas. ‘We went in and Steve came down and he was suited and booted, and Mum was all over him, dust off the shoulder and checking his tie was straight and all this sort of thing. It was probably the biggest occasion he had been to at that stage as far as any presentation was concerned, and she was a very solicitous mum and he was clearly the apple of her eye. You could see that.

  ‘But there was a slightly strange atmosphere. The guy who was driving us, a friend of mine, picked up on it straight away. There was something odd about the atmosphere at that house. It was the fact that he was so beholden to his mum. She was the presence in the house and it was, you know, “What time are you going to be back?”, and he was slightly too old for those sorts of questions, even in those days. She was overbearing almost.’

  Mick Ovett was a very different character, and life on the market – exchanging banter with the customers and repartee with his peers, forays down to the bookies’ and the pub, and a ciggy over a cuppa at the caff – was sufficient distraction. When he came home he just wanted to have a meal and crash into a chair in front of the telly. Gay, on the other hand, allowed herself to be drawn completely into the phenomenon which her son became.

  Ovett says that his mother was a stabilising presence in his life, rather than a motivator, but long-time training partner Matt Paterson felt that she had a more formative role in the early days. ‘I would say Gay was very influential on Steve’s younger mental build-up, psyching himself up for races,’ says Paterson. ‘She was a hard taskmaster, really very aggressive, “never take second best”. She always wanted Steve to be a winner and there was quite an atmosphere in the house. And driving up to the Crystal Palace when he started getting involved in a lot of the competitions, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife at times, especially as the races became progressively more important.

  ‘I remember once we were driving up and I think it might have been the AAAs or the Olympic trials, and Steve was a little bit worried about someone, I think it was Tony Settle, an 800 metres runner. And Gay just turned round and said, “For fuck’s sake, don’t worry about him, you know he’s no good. You can beat them all.” And I’m sitting there thinking, Christ! And she was like, “What do you think, Matt?” And I’m going, “Yeah, yeah, I agree.” Because every second word was “fuck” this and “fuck” that. But I do think she had a major part to play in Steve’s athletic experience and upbringing.’

  Paterson, like Cocksedge, is several years older than Ovett and is a forthright character, with a reputation for speaking his mind. But he admits to being cowed by Gay. ‘Oh, I was like a mouse. I must admit I picked up a few swear words from Gay along the way. And when the press used to phone her up I was sometimes in the house and I used to laugh my head off when I heard some of the bleeps down the phone. She used to rip the shit out of some of these people, big time. Gay was the buffer; she was the one that just tied them in knots. She was good for him. I would just say she was a tremendous part of the Ovett build-up and philosophy, and character building, personality, everything.’

  It seems incongruous that a woman like Gay, who worked in a market caff and then managed a bar, should be so ill at ease with people generally. However, several visitors had found themselves welcome at the Ovett household: athletes John Walker, Steve Scott and Craig Masback, as well as regulars like Dave Cocksedge and Matt Paterson. But women were another matter. One of the few girlfriends that Ovett had before Rachel was a training partner, Lesley Kiernan.

  Ovett was seventeen at the time, and Kiernan over a year younger. Now Lesley Foley, with a teenage daughter who is Essex County Junior 1500 metres champion, she says she understands Gay better now that she is a mother herself. ‘Not many people got on with Gay, in all fairness, but I think her bark was worse than anything else. But she did try to control everything he did. Her [in fact, Mick’s] parents had him for quite a while, and I think maybe that was an underlying problem, trying to overcompensate. She didn’t mean to be as she was. I didn’t think she was really that bad. Her heart was in the right place. She wanted the best for him, and she wanted to do it properly. We all do what we can as parents, we don’t know whether it’s right or wrong, but you do what you think is best for your child.’

  Obviously, Ovett had a much more serious relationship with his future wife Rachel, and his mother’s reaction to his new girlfriend was consequently much stronger. He feels that Gay’s resentment towards Rachel was exacerbated by the fact that the Moscow Olympics were so close. An Olympic gold had been the family target for many years, and suddenly he had introduced somebody else into the tight-knit group at the eleventh hour. He had started courting Rachel in 1978, but the fact that it took him around a year from meeting her to bringing her home indicates that he knew it would cause problems. He was right to be worried. It was a rancorous argument about Rachel that caused him to leave home soon after the Olympics.

  Rachel Ovett is a chatty, sociable woman with a disarming manner. At the Rome Golden League in 2001, Ovett related to me, with as much bewilderment as pride, that his wife had gleaned more in a ten-minute conversation that morning with a former rival than he himself had learned in a twenty-year acquaintanceship. But the Ovett household, dominated by Gay, was too much even for Rachel Waller. ‘There was always a lot of noise, a huge amount of noise, but there was quite a lot of avoidance of relationships, I think. I’ve never met a household like that in all my life. I found it very difficult to be in a situation where I was immediately judged, even disliked. When Gay met me, she shook my hand, but she didn’t look at me. And it was very odd. I just knew how hard it was for her.

  ‘She was so young, and it was such an unusual situation. I mean, to be pregnant at fifteen, can you imagine what that must have been like? I think she was probably quite lonely, and didn’t have any friends. She made Steve so important, they were great friends, and she really didn’t have anything else. I just feel that she should have trusted Steve a little bit more, but she did a brilliant job, an amazing job.’

  It is a credit to Ovett that, although the rift with his mother never really healed, despite intervention by Rachel, he was able to add an amusing footnote to the mother–son relationship. Craig Masback, now the head of USA Track & Field, the American federation, had visited the family home in Brighton and trained with Ovett in the late seventies. Masback had obviously been as bemused as everyone else by Ovett’s relati
onship with his mother. And, as Ovett recounts, in the wake of a rare outburst in a tabloid by Gay – despite the press boycott, she would call to complain from time to time – ‘Craig saw this headline, “Gay Ovett Speaks Out”. And he said to himself, “Oh, that explains a lot: domineering mother, no girlfriend, still living at home . . .” He thought I was gay.’

  My first conversation with Peter Coe was worse than that with Gay Ovett. I called him in early 1981 to get some information on an upcoming indoor race. Peter tore me off a strip about ringing him at home, and slammed down the phone. It is perhaps unfortunate that the indoor meeting was a few days later, because, still furious, I launched into him for his bad manners. He stared at me, nonplussed, through his horn-rimmed spectacles, and said he was quite happy to talk to me while at any athletics meeting. Suffice to say, we didn’t speak again for several years, despite my occasional approaches. If Seb knew about these exchanges, he never let on, and was almost always accessible and courteous, as he was with all the media. The truth was probably that he knew his old man could fly off the handle at anyone, Seb included.

  Most people in athletics find it impossible to understand how a son could be coached by his father well into his mid-twenties, given the sort of problems which inevitably arise between parents and offspring. Steve Cram said it was one of the contributory factors why he never really related to Coe. Dave Warren, who eventually got to know Coe as well as he’d known Ovett, sums up the general mystification: ‘An athlete’s relationship with his coach is an extraordinary relationship. When your father is your coach, it’s even more extraordinary, and it takes a very special athlete even to endure it. My father was always very supportive of me, and very knowledgeable. But the thought of him being my coach as well? It just wouldn’t have worked. And the fact that Peter and Seb could have had that relationship speaks volumes for one or the other of them.’

  The consensus was that it spoke volumes for Seb, and it certainly puts the term ‘endurance training’ into a different perspective. Because Peter was not an easy man to get on with, even by his own accounts. While it may be admirable to tell your children that you will help them out in anything they want to do seriously, it hardly seems necessary to add, ‘If it’s fun you’re looking for, don’t come to me.’ Similarly, his admission that Seb was the only one of his four children who ‘learned obedience’ is something that would make most parents wince.

  ‘I don’t think there was ever a time when it didn’t feel natural for him to be coaching me,’ says Coe. ‘It’s not that he suddenly came on the scene when I was twenty or sixteen, I think that might have been complicated. But from the age of twelve he was there and driving me to cross-country races and school races. He has always been incredibly supportive of anything his kids did. My sister showed a big talent for dance very early and he made sure that she got to the Royal Ballet School. My other sister has had interests pushed and promoted and fostered. I think we would all agree that my dad is just a great believer in doing things, it was never that you had to be a runner or an artist. I always remember him talking to my brother because nothing at school excited him. He’s now vice-president of Levi Strauss, but I remember Dad turned to my brother with a complete air of desperation and said, “I don’t care what you do, I don’t care whether you are a dustman, but just for Christ’s sake be the best at something.” He doesn’t suffer fools very gladly, he’s always been tough, but he would do anything for you. I’ve seen the most extraordinary acts of kindness. I mean, if somebody writes a letter to him, even today, with limited sight, he will sit and do an eight-page reply to some seventeen-year-old athlete.’

  ‘My athlete’ became a source of fun, derision and disbelief for many years, beginning in 1978, when Coe broke through into the big time. Because ‘my athlete’ was how Peter invariably referred to his son. Even as late as 1982, the British federation’s secretary Nigel Cooper was party to a conversation which sounds like it’s taken from an episode of Fawlty Towers. Few athletes and coaches get on with their national federation, and 1982 was the cusp of the transition from ‘amateur’ to professional athletics when there was a legacy of athletes feeling that they were treated like chattels. A few days before the European Championships in Athens, the federation was demanding that athletes compete in an international meeting at Crystal Palace and a row blew up about it. Ironically, as he is now the federation’s CEO, Dave Moorcroft was one of the athletes at odds with the administrators. Coe was the other. Cooper relates the exchange between himself and Bill Evans, then the federation’s president, and Peter. ‘We went to the hotel, and there was Seb sitting with his knees hunched up on the bed, and Peter in the middle of the room, hands behind his back. He very subtly started off saying, “We will not run.” I said, “Fine, then you won’t go to Athens.” That started it off. Peter kept saying, “I will not run.” And I kept saying, “But you’re not selected, Peter, we’re selecting Seb.” And from Seb there was a diplomatic silence, because he certainly is not a fool. But I thought it was symptomatic of his relationship with his father.’ It’s worth noting that Coe and Moorcroft, both world record-holders and strong favourites, substantially underperformed in Athens.

  The man who had probably the biggest falling out with Peter Coe was George Gandy, the coach at Loughborough University, Seb Coe’s alma mater. Gandy was an expert in biomechanics, or how weights and other resistance training could build the young Coe’s body strength until he could compete with naturally powerful athletes like Ovett. Peter Coe was always the first to admit that he knew little or nothing about athletics training when he began coaching, but he was eager to learn and to approach anyone for advice. He could see the sense of using Gandy’s expertise, but, as the Gandy–Seb relationship blossomed, a collision with Peter became inevitable.

  Gandy recalls his first meeting with Peter. ‘He was very forthright: some arrogance in the belief that you can actually get the information you need, and have the personal capability to make things work on that basis, without a great personal background. I would doubt that it’s possible, but he actually proved that it was.’ To Peter’s credit, he sat back, got on with his own job as production manager at the cutlery company, and let his son get on with his job, with gymnasium input from Gandy. As Gandy admits, ‘My relationship with Peter and with Seb was growing, and there was increasing confidence. Peter was holding me in growing trust.’

  Nevertheless, Gandy felt that Seb was not relating everything back to Peter. ‘The first sign that he was a politician was how he handled the situation between his father and myself. In Seb’s words, “I know Peter overreacts,” he said, two or three times. And I think that if Seb knew there was likely to be an overreaction from Peter on some particular issue, he probably just didn’t tell him. I thought he had the courage to take on the whole world, except his father.’

  Gandy was also privy to Peter’s volatile nature. ‘He blew hot and cold, Peter. There were times when he was very warmly acknowledging things. I went and stayed at their house. He came to my house for dinner. My wife thought he was the rudest man she ever met, and she doesn’t take offence at people very regularly. But from the moment he came in the door to the moment he left, he didn’t acknowledge her.’

  Given Peter Coe’s inaccessibility at home, when Seb started to gain success in the late seventies, Gandy increasingly became a route to Seb at Loughborough. And Gandy himself started to receive a lot of publicity and no small credit for the gym sessions that had helped strengthen Coe, in the lead up to Moscow. ‘Peter was beginning to feel that he didn’t like that very much,’ remembers Gandy. ‘I detected some degree of friction then, and I think that Peter decided it was a good move to take away Seb, to put in some preparation for Moscow, and he went away for a good couple of months. I think it was partially motivated by a wish to have Seb out of this close environment, so he could establish clear ownership. You have to understand the person. When Seb broke the world record in Oslo, with the crowds rapturously applauding, Peter is standing on to
p of the rostrum with Seb, waving to the crowd.’

  Many people felt that Peter deserved the accolades. Dave Moorcroft was a forerunner of Coe, both at Loughborough University, and as a leading British middle-distance runner. He articulates the appraisal of many people in respect of Peter Coe. ‘One of the wonderful things about many of the African runners is that they don’t have artificial barriers, and neither did Seb. That’s the way barrier-breakers tend to be. Look at what Paula [Radcliffe] has done. It can’t be done. Luckily, someone forgot to tell her, and that’s the way it was with Seb. A little guy like that can’t run that fast, but he did it. And his dad hadn’t read enough books to tell him he couldn’t do it, and thank God he didn’t, because you need that sort of vision.’

  Even visionaries can be a pain in the arse, though; perhaps it even goes with the territory. And nobody says you’ve got to be a nice guy. I always had the impression Peter Coe didn’t waste too much time thinking about such fripperies. He had work to do. And his life’s work was his son. Since his son is, at the time of writing, the only man successfully to defend an Olympic 1500 metres title, he didn’t do too badly. And his son obviously found ways of dealing with his dominating and opinionated father.

  Neil Wilson, who had had an insight into Steve Ovett’s home life with his mother, would also get a close-up of the Coe father–son relationship. By the late seventies, Wilson was the athletics correspondent for the Daily Mail, which did a deal with the Coes in the months leading up to the 1980 Olympics. He travelled to a race in Italy with Seb and Peter.

  ‘[The race] was going to be in Turin, and we were picked up at Milan airport by the organiser,’ remembers Wilson. ‘Seb sat in the front and Peter and I in the back, and for the entire hour’s drive Peter went on and on and on. Meanwhile, in the front Seb was asleep or appeared to be asleep. He was going on about everything, from how you made cutlery to political stories. He was very, very right wing, Peter. But it was all detailed stuff, and terribly boring. And we get the other end and checked into this hotel and Peter said, “I’m just going up to my room,” while Seb said, “I’m just going to have a juice in the bar.” So Coe indicated with his eyes that I should come this way and we started an interview there. But right at the start of the interview he sort of smiled and said, “Now you can see why I pretend to be asleep.”’