The Perfect Distance

by Pat Butcher

  Straub had provided the springboard and Ovett had misjudged the result. Coe says, ‘It was Christmas come early. We had two warm-up laps and an 800 metres. If anybody made any errors that day, anybody that allowed a race to develop like that with me in it, unless they really thought that I must have been so buried, so out of form after the 800 metres, that they risked it. We’ve only really touched upon the enormity of the occasion. Every morning, [the British] press conference was the first port of call for every international journalist. The French weren’t going to their headquarters asking about Marajo, and the Italians weren’t going to ask about Fontanella. It was “What did they have for breakfast? Were they sleeping? Are they both well.”’

  That was certainly true for Kenny Moore of Sports Illustrated. Although the USA had boycotted, there was a coterie of US press in Moscow. Coe’s biographer David Miller bumped into an exasperated Moore in the stadium approaches on the day before the 1500 metres final. ‘Every time I call my office and talk to them,’ Moore told Miller, ‘they say, “Fine, but you’ve only got half the story . . . It’s the event of the whole Games back in the States.”’

  The disbelief at the result was equivalent to the aftermath of the 800 metres. One bemused competitor was Steve Cram. ‘I got fairly detached once Straub started doing his stuff. I was fighting my own little personal battle not to come last. There were nine in the race and I was eighth. By the time we got to the bell we were pretty much strung out, so you were running and there was no big screen, we weren’t watching anything. I came down the home straight having battled with the Yugoslavian guy [Zdravkovic]. I was determined not to be last across the line. And the scene I met as I crossed the line – and bearing in mind you were expecting Ovett to win – [was that] Ovett was nowhere to be seen, and Coe was prostrate on the ground. I did tap Seb on the back as if to say, “Tough luck, mate,” and went to Steve as the winner, and I said, “Well done”. It was only when I turned round and saw Seb getting up [that] I realised I had got it wrong.’

  Almost everybody else had got it wrong, too. And anybody who said otherwise was either a blinkered fan of one of the pair or lying. They were good enough to win both, but too good to lose both. And there was plenty more to come; years of it. But, although Steve Ovett went on to break world records – the first just a month later, then in 1981 and 1983 – I would venture that his real career ended with the Moscow 800 metres, just as Coe’s real career began with the Moscow 1500 metres.

  Coe felt too drained even to celebrate what would be his greatest victory. ‘I was absolutely exhausted by the whole thing,’ he remembers. ‘By about nine o’clock I’d had a couple of beers, and I thought, Sod this. It’s a bit like graduating: you think you’re going to go out and get blotto. But I just decided to turn in. But, about nine-thirty, the door burst open, and Daley [Thompson], Sharron Davies and, I think, Shirley Strong came in and pulled me out of bed, and threw flour and water over me, and told me I was coming out to party. I can’t even remember what day I got back.’

  Coe was just beginning, but Ovett had achieved everything he wanted to achieve. Yet, unlike a multitude of predecessors for whom international athletics was a rite of passage, even a passport to fame, running was his métier. He could earn a living at it, was already doing so. He hadn’t been a good student, he hadn’t gone to university. Unlike Coe, he didn’t have political or pressing business ambitions, although he would invest (unwisely) in a couple of ventures. He had little option. He became a ‘professional’ runner. He still hated losing, but as many people acknowledged, winning was not the be-all and end-all for Ovett, and that became even more the case after the Moscow 800 metres.

  Coe, in the meantime, had discovered what it was like to win a race, rather than a time trial. OK, in effect, the Olympic 1500 metres did end up having a pacemaker, Straub, but Coe wasn’t to know that. He did what he had to do to win, just as Ovett had done in the 800 metres. What delicious irony. Each had won the other’s event. It was unbelievable, but it had happened. the outcome was far better than if they had won the events they ‘should’ have won. But we – the public, the aficionados, even, heaven forbid, the media – were back where we began. When would they race each other again? Because, good as this was, it wasn’t good enough. We wanted a result. We wanted a winner, and a loser.

  Someone had the temerity to ask Coe the question at a post-race press conference at Crystal Palace the following week: ‘When are you and Ovett going to race each other?’ The ‘new’ Sebastian Coe nearly bit his head off. ‘Where have you been the last couple of weeks,’ the newly crowned, confident Olympic 1500 metres champion replied brusquely. Hang on, had we got the right one here? Yes, we had.

  Coe had won a casual 800 metres that night, with Dave Warren second. Ovett was too casual in the 5000 metres, thinking that he had disposed of John Treacy at the bottom of the finishing straight. But Treacy, who had collapsed from dehydration in the Olympic 10,000 metres, and had shown his mettle by coming back and running better in the Olympic 5000, was not going to quit now. The Irishman came again, and ducked under Ovett’s outstretched arms for a priceless photo-finish victory.

  With the Olympic Games coming in mid-summer, there was still a good month to go before the end of the track season. Coe continued well enough, running within a tenth of his and Ovett’s 1500 metres world record in Zurich, 3 minutes 32.2 seconds. But then he had another abrupt end to his campaign with a slipped disc, which came just before he might have run against Ovett in the third Golden Mile, at Crystal Palace. In any case, Ovett won that one, and several others, before he broke the 1500 metres world record that Coe had so narrowly missed.

  Ovett was back in his traditional milieu – out in the sticks. If Coe loved the metropolitan glamour of Zurich, then Ovett favoured small-town venues, like Koblenz on the German Rhine. In midsummer, the little town on the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle was enchanting. With its cobbled streets, its clock-tower with figurines waltzing out to celebrate the chiming of the hours, and its riverside restaurants, it was a place to relax after the frenzy of the big-city circuit, with its round of airports, hotels, stadia and feeding holes.

  When the prior meeting was in Cologne on the Sunday, with Koblenz on Wednesday, there was an opportunity for everyone – athletes, coaches, managers, even journalists – to take a hydrofoil downriver to Mainz or, better still, to Rüdersheim on the Tuesday, have a stroll through the vineyards, take a funicular up to the Germania statue overlooking the Rhine, sample the trochen, and take a steamer back again, cruising past a selection of the baroque or plain barmy castles in the air, and still be in time for dinner in Koblenz, and another relaxing day before the evening meeting. The weather in central Europe in mid-summer was invariably hot and humid, and the little wooden-benched stadium on the banks of the Rhine, packed with over 20,000 fans, was a wonderful venue for fast running. There was little or no wind, the moths kept out of the way, congregating around the floodlights, and it was still warm at ten o’clock at night; in short, perfect conditions.

  Ovett made the most of them. While most of their colleagues had gone chasing the money in Dublin, Ovett and Wessinghage had hatched a plot to annexe the world record. Abetted by Gary Cook, yet another fine British middle-distance man – who would figure among the quartet who broke the world 4×800 metres record two years later – Wessinghage and Ovett were dragged through 800 metres in 1 minute 53 seconds, before the German forged ahead on the third lap.

  Wessinghage was an interesting character. He managed to balance the impossible combination of qualifying as a medical doctor – with all the long hours that entailed – and being one of the world’s leading middle-distance runners for half a dozen years. It was his misfortune that those years coincided with the era of Ovett and Coe, but he was not cowed. He would have his crowning glory in Athens in 1982, winning the European 5000 metres title. But Koblenz in 1980 was perhaps his second-finest race. He wasn’t just in there to make up the numbers. He had agreed to pace Ovett on the third
lap, but he failed by only a stride to beat him. He is now head of a hospital group on the Baltic coast of Germany, a post which he combines with managing a successful running consultancy with Markus Ryffel, the Swiss-German who won Olympic 5000 metres silver in 1984.

  Wessinghage was paying his annual (competitive) visit to the London Marathon in 2003 when we met. As Craig Masback remarked of him, ‘His facility with English was such that he was as much part of our group as anyone from an English-speaking country.’ I have already quoted Wessinghage on Ovett, and he admitted as readily as any of that elite group that Coe was just as impossible to beat. But he was justly proud of his effort in Koblenz. ‘That was quite a special situation. Koblenz is a stadium which holds about 22,000 to 24,000. I think they had 26,000 on that night. And the stands are very close to the track. So a perfect atmosphere on the Rhine, no wind, you couldn’t imagine any better situation to run the world record in and it finally worked out. This time Steve didn’t kick with a hundred to go; he kicked with fifty to go. But he won.’

  Three men broke the world record that night. Ovett prevailed in 3 minutes 31.36 seconds, with Wessinghage on 3 minutes 31.58 seconds. Another German, the ‘unknown’ Harald Hudak, ran 3 minutes 31.96 seconds. The guys running in Dublin were distraught at the missed opportunity, as Masback recalls: ‘We ran a sort of boring 3.56 mile at Santry and were back at the hotel. We turned on the news and Ovett had broken the world record. That was not remarkable. I mean, the Koblenz track was magic and I could go there today and run a fast time. But the report said Ovett dragged two others under . . .

  ‘We were all kind of hanging our heads, because we had all gone to Dublin for the money instead of going to Koblenz, and everyone thought, Oh gee, maybe if I’d been in the race, maybe I would have been one of the ones to be dragged under the record. But none of us knew who it was. We figured Wessinghage for sure, and we thought it might be [Mike] Boit. We hoped it was Boit, because if it wasn’t, we didn’t know who it was. And some time later Ray Flynn, who was just slower showering or whatever, came down and said it was Hudak. Harald Hudak had gone from running 3.36 to running 3.31.9, a time which none of us ever ran. It reinforced that it could have been us.’

  Ovett’s uncle Dave recalls Mick displaying his son’s Olympic medals at the front of the family stall on Brighton Market for a week, for all their customers to admire. But a show of the medals at another venue was going to mar a wonderful year for Ovett, and put the final dagger into his tumultuous relationship with his mother. The local Withdean Stadium, which had been closed throughout his Olympic preparation, so that an artificial track could be laid, was to be reopened by Ovett at the end of the season, with a mayoral reception to follow. Ovett was annoyed when he arrived at the opening ceremony to find his medals on display, without his consent. Then he became incensed when he learned that Rachel had been excluded from a seat at the top table. He saw the hand of Gay in the machinations. When he and Rachel returned to the family home after the celebration, a huge and terminal argument erupted, and Ovett stalked out, never to return.

  Reg Hook, the Brighton & Hove club president, well remembers the build-up to the schism. He was presiding over the whole operation, the track opening and the banquet, and recalls, ‘In his book [Ovett], he says he doesn’t know how these medals got to this reception. Well, they got there because I had them, and I was given them by Gay. She said, “I can’t give them, but they ought to see them,” and I think she was right. But he never made a fuss about his medals or anything like that; he never made a fuss about records or winning things. I took them to the reception, and to the school afterwards, because he was quite happy with that. A lot of kids came to see these Olympic medals. But a couple of days later he came to my house and asked for them. He was perfectly all right, came in, had a chat, took the medals. There was no indication as far as I was concerned then that it had caused friction with his parents, nothing like that at all; he was perfectly affable. I’m certain if he wasn’t having this problem at home because of Rachel, it wouldn’t have been so important.’

  It had been an abrupt and bitter end to a momentous year. But regret at the rupture with his parents was eased by the promise of a new life with Rachel. The pair quickly set up home in a nearby flat, and truly began their own adventure. Rachel recalls, ‘It felt absolutely the right thing to do. There was a finality to the whole family relationship. It had reached an inevitable conclusion, sadly. Steve had probably stayed at home longer than most people. He was ready, absolutely ready, to move, and it was perfectly normal and natural that he should. It should have been perfectly normal and natural that Mum and Dad could have accepted that. Sadly, it wasn’t. It all seemed so unnecessarily unaccepting. But it was great fun, lovely having our own place, and our own things. I think we coped remarkably well, considering everything. We just so wanted to be together and to do our own thing, and have our own space and time, like everybody else does, when they are embarking on their first relationship or future marriage.’

  They were to be wed the following year. But that was to be just one of many momentous occasions in the lives of Steve Ovett and his great rival, Sebastian Coe, in 1981. Amateur athletics was unravelling, and Coe and Ovett were the principal architects of its demise. Their Olympic ‘swap’ had had the whole world riveted to their TV sets. The rivalry was even bigger now, and they were going to have the freedom to exploit it. A quarter of a century ago, there were not so many championships as there are nowadays, and 1981 was going to be a blank year. On the other hand, the embryonic circuit of Oslo, Zurich, Brussels, London and a host of other European and further-flung cities – not forgetting Ovett’s preferred backwaters, like Koblenz and Rieti – provided a moving stage for their exploits. And there were plenty of promoters willing to pay ever-increasing sums of money for their appearances. Both would say later that 1981 was probably their best year. It was going to give even more impetus to the burgeoning legend that was Coe and Ovett.

  17

  Run – and Take the Money

  From the moment they began running competitively, Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe were governed by the rules of the Amateur Athletic Association. In the century since its foundation, the AAA had spawned myriad affiliate organisations and a panoply of regulations and restrictions. But one rule was paramount, and it was the very raison d’être for the AAA. It resides in a single word – amateur. Its root is the Latin amare – love. And that noble motivation – rather than money – was fostered by the AAA. Nowadays, ‘amateur’ is used pejoratively, but a hundred years ago, it was on the plus side of the philosophical divide.

  There was no love lost between the amateurs and the professionals. The AAA was created in 1880 in an attempt to cleanse the professional swamp known as pedestrianism. The ‘peds’ were guilty of a multitude of sins, among them race fixing, deliberately losing, and competing in different parts of the country under assumed names. It was not unknown for rivals to be ‘knobbled’, that’s to say poisoned. And there were early attempts by athletes to boost their own performances: strychnine was a popular tonic, in small doses. It was all designed to get a better starting mark in the handicap racing which was widespread at the time, and to get better prices with the bookmakers. For gambling was the ruling passion of the sport.

  It was how the sport had come into being at least two centuries beforehand. The example of the Greeks and the ancient Olympics seemed to have been all but forgotten. (But the ancient Greeks were never amateur in the sense that was conceived by the English establishment, anyway. Victory at Olympia might only have realised a crown of olive twigs, but their home towns and cities rewarded winners royally. And those rewards didn’t prevent them competing in the next Olympics, or the other Games – Nemean, Pythian, and so on – in the Hellenic world.) Pedestrianism grew out of the practice of noblemen betting on their servants racing against one another. Those early matches are probably also responsible for the predominance of the mile in English athletics, since many of the races would be held on
highways and turnpikes, with the milestones marking the race distance. Despite the widespread cheating, by the middle of the nineteenth century there were legitimate great performances being recorded. But, since most of the races were ‘matches’ – one man (or very occasionally one woman) against another – if one of the competitors stopped before the end, as was also common, the match was deemed to be won, so the time was either not recorded or became incidental. In short, the time was unimportant. This is a practice which arguably could be reintroduced with much benefit to international athletics.

  In the middle-distances, which have always been the touchstone of Anglo-Saxon – that is, British, Irish, American and Commonwealth (excuse the shorthand) – athletics meetings, times began to look impressive around 150 years ago. By today’s standards, they would be good times for older schoolboys or good female club athletes. The latest edition of the IAAF World Records feels able, now the organisation has dropped ‘Amateur’ from its title, to record professional performances from as far back as the 1850s. (The IAAF, incidentally, was formed in 1914, two years after being mooted in Stockholm at the Olympic Games.)

  On 25 April 1857, one J. Blackwood ran 2 minutes 5 seconds for 880 yards (the half-mile) at the College Sports, Addiscombe, which is not far from where the Crystal Palace had been transferred three years earlier. Two minutes was broken for the first time at the Cambridge University track of Fenners by Arthur Pelham, who was clocked at 1 minute 59 seconds. There may have been pro times faster than these, because it sounds as if both Blackwood and Pelham were university runners, hence amateurs. But, although Lon Myers, the great US runner, might have been styled as an amateur, and doubtless did begin his career as one, he was competing in money matches by the mid-1880s.