BIG M MELBOURNE MARATHON - October 13th, 1985

by Fraser Clyne.

There are many ways of getting to Australia but my route with Philippine Airlines took me to Melbourne via Karachi, Bangkok, Manila and Sydney, arriving in the state capital of Victoria some 50 hours after leaving home in Aberdeen.   The purpose of this epic journey was to run in the eighth Annual Big M Melbourne Marathon which in the past has attracted such big names as Bill Rodger (who ran a course record of 2:11:08 in 1982) and Juma Ikangaa (winner in 1983 and 1984).   Invited runners this year included Rob Tabb (a 2:09 performer at Boston in 1983) and Belgian champion Fred Vandervennet.   Top Australians included ex-Briton Laurie Adams, Canberra's Gary Hand and Perth's Alan Thurlow, Olympic 10000 metre runner Steve Austin was also included in the starting line up as a pace maker.

A warm spring morning greeted the 5000 runners in the South Melbourne suburb of Frankston for the start of the Southern Hemisphere's biggest marathon of the year.   The calm conditions helped Austin pull the leading group through five km in 15:20 and 10 km in 30:40.   The fast early pace quickly whittled the contenders down to three - Vandervennet, Tabb and myself.   We passed through fifteen km in 46:30 as the course started to climb through a series of testing rises.   Vandervennet was however in no mood to allow any inclines to slow things down and he actually began to accelerate away from Tabb and myself.   By halfway which I reached in 65:35, the little Belgian was 100 metres ahead and I in turn held a 100 metre advantage over Tabb.   The American soon got back into the action however, over taking me at twenty five km and setting off in pursuit of Vandervennet.   However the Belgian continued to open what was already a considerable gap to shrug off any last doubts as to who was going to win.  

Tabb's efforts to catch Vandervennet took their toll and I regained second place just beyond the thirty five km point.   All three runners slowed significantly in the closing stages as the light headwinds and the early pace began to take effect.   Vandervennet maintained his form however to run out clear winner in 2:12:35 with myself second in 2:14:20.   Ron Tabb suffered most in the closing miles, eventually having to surrender third place to Alan Thurlow.

.Result:   1.   Fred Vandervennet (Belgium)   2:12:35; 2.   Fraser Clyne (Scotland)   2:14:20; 3.   Alan Thurlow (Australia)   2:16:07;   4.   Ron Tabb (USA)  2:17:45; 5.   Laurie Adams (Australia)   2:17:48

NIKE-MARS 6TH HONG KONG

INTERNATIONAL MARATHON

by Dave Clark

It was apparent the moment our Cathay Pacific 747 dropped beneath the cloud level and we caught our first glimpse of Hong Kong that this was somewhere completely different from mainland China.    Imagine Manhattan dropped on top of Fort William - 30 storey blocks of flats growing out of the glens like some giant crystal garden.   This is a place where money rules, and because this does not permit the closing of streets for marathons, we were soon whisked away by the ultra-modern railway to the Jubilee Sports Centre at Sha Tin, our base for the weekend.   Sha Tin is a vast city of tower blocks where only four years ago there was a sleepy fishing village and perhaps a floating restaurant moored out in the bay.   It boasts a massive new racecourse, with an eight storey grandstand holding 37,000, and where more money is won or lost in one day's horse racing than at any racecourse in Britain during the whole year.   The Jubilee Sports Centre close by iwas opened  in October 1982 by the Duke of Kent and is claimed (rightly in my view) to be the best equipped anywhere in the world.   In the stand above the tartan track was a covered 100 metre synthetic sprint training track!

Race day was Saturday 22nd January and, unfortunately for those of us looking forward to a warm weather marathon as a change from the British winter, we awoke to a cold (eight degrees celsius) rainy day with a nasty (3m/sec) wind.   in these conditions, the 300 starters set off at 9:00 am, stepping gingerly round the puddles on the track before moving out on to the main lap.   Once out on the road, young Graham Kennedy from Australia made the running with Jim Dingwall following, and a bit behind, fellow Aussie Gary Hand, myself and Stephen Browne from Thailand.   Kennedy put on the pace (five miles in 25:26, 10 in 51:14) which was brave running in the windy conditions, but behind him the race was beginning to take shape.   Local man Ted Turner running his first marathon but with impressive credentials at the shorter distances had been taking it easy on the first 6.3 mile lap.   Now he blasted off through the field at sub-five minute miling - he sailed past my plodding figure at about seven miles as though I were standing still - and by 21.5 miles he had taken the lead.  

But Jim is too experienced to get unnerved by this kind of running and was content to bide his time.   I, too, running on my own and able to watch the proceedings in front and behind at the many points where the lap turned back on itself, judged that at least one of the leaders would come back in due course.   The final positions however were not settled however until the twenty-fifth mile when Turner eventually hit the wall, and staggering on to the track at the finish had to accept second place.   Kennedy too was feeling the distance and conceded third place to me although he was well clear of the rest of the field.

The Ladies race was closely fought and won in 2:43:08 by saffron-clad Yuko Gordon, an air hostess with Cathay Pacific married to a Scot, with Winnie Ng from Hong Kong second in 2:43:55.

The course was largely flat though with some tight corners.   Though the scenery - Sha Tin City No 1, the Sports Centre, and the racecourse car park - was not exactly inspiring, the layout was excellent in terms of being able to watch the race develop.   Scottish steeplechaser David Brown, now of the Hong Kong Distance Runners Club, chaired the organisation committee and was ably assisted  by a hard working team - among whom special mention might be made of Walter Gerrard (ex-pro-footballer) on the publicity side, and Stewart McNeish, whose Gurkhas were responsible for setting out the feeding stations and distance markers.

Result:   1.   Jim Dingwall (Scotland)   2:15:48; 2.   Ted Turner (HK)   2:17:27;   3.   David Clark (Scotland)   2:19:14; 4.   G Kennedy (Australia) 2:19:51   5.   Stephen Browne (Thailand)   2:24:37; 6.   Mick Woods (Ireland)   2:25:56; 7.   Tim Soutar (HK)   2:26:37; 8.   Gary Hand (Australia)   2:26:42

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THE BARCELONA MARATHON - 13th MARCH 1983

By Craig Ross

.My first reaction on hearing of my selection for the Barcelona marathon was to seek advice from my long suffering training partner, Murray McNaught (Fife AC).    Murray had lived in Barcelona for three years and informed that the course he ran was basically flat and the field not particularly strong.    I arrived in Barcelona on Friday afternoon, 11th March, along with Lindsay Robertson and Andy Daly plus team manager Neil Donnachie.   My optimism was soon dispelled upon hearing that great efforts had been made to make this very much an international race with invited teams and individuals from USSR, USA, Mexico, England,  Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland.   A semi-tour of the course on the Sunday revealed a new route through the city and revealed some fairly long climbs.   This was going to be no picnic!

Sunday morning, 13th March.   Breakfast like condemned men at 5:00 am before the 8:00 am race start.   The weather was surprisingly cool but as the day unfolded it became quite hot  - as did the pace!   From the gun several Spaniards burst ahead of the 2000 plus field, soon dies but had only 25 miles left to hang on.   As the race settled won it was clear there would only be one winner.   Alan Zacharissen  of Denmark.   He was two minutes clear at the half marathon, sorry, 13.1 mile point and looked very strong (not that I ever saw him).    The chasing group of about fifteen at this point included Lindsay and Andy followed by a group chasing the chasing group of about ten.   I was somewhere between the chasing group and the group chasing the chasing group.   Or was it the group chasing the  ... ?   The course involved a steady climb up to seven miles, flat to ten miles, downhill to twelve miles, flat past 13.1 miles to 15 miles, then a steady climb up to twenty miles.   My time at halfway was 1:09:30 but I wasn't feeling too great.   I made a great effort to try to latch on to Andy up the long drag to twenty miles but suffered badly for my efforts.   Andy seemed to get stronger in the last six miles which were thankfully flat as I was grimly hanging on.   Lindsay was miles up the road at this point running strongly as others were falling apart.   The last half mile involved an emotional 'sprint' down the famous La Rambla which was lined with cheering crowds.   At this point I felt as if my knees were bouncing off the ground and the Mediterranean only 200 yards from the finish looked very inviting.   The enthusiastic crowds plus the quality of the field probably compensated for the tough course as several runners were pulled along to personal best times, including Andy and Lindsay plus Nick Sirs of England.   I ran my second fastest time so couldn't be too disappointed.     

The Scottish team won the team prize which delighted our manager, Neil Donnachie, who incidentally did an excellent job.   He made sure we were well looked after and was always on hand in case of problems.   The reception in the evening was a highly enjoyable affair meeting runners from different countries, exchanging mementos and running experiences.   I was sorry to leave Barcelona to return to the cold of Scotland.   The whole weekend was over all too quickly - that is apart from a certain period of effort which lasted two hours twenty two minutes!

Result:   1.   Zacharissen (Denmark)   2:11:06;   2.   Stahl (Sweden)   2:16:51;   3.   Semenov (USSR)   2:17:05; 4.   Villanueva (Mexico - 1st Vet)   2:17:44;   5.   Catalan (Spain)   2:2:17:46;   6.   L Robertson   2:18:02;   ....... 10.  A Daly  2:2:20:09; ...12. Faircloth (England)  2:221:13; ...  17.   C Ross   2:22:24.

NEW YORK MARATHON, 28TH OCTOBER 1984

by Dave Clark

The pre-race talk in New York this year was not so much about who the favourites might be, but rather about money and prizes.   Fred Lebow, whose efforts in the 70's created the business of big-city marathons, had just published a book "Inside the World of Big Time Marathoning" and had come out in public with a a list of money prizes, these previously having been an open secret.   Following the success of the 1983 event, won by Rod Dixon in 2:08:59, the hype was greater than ever: not only would men and women winners get $25,000 each, there would be Mercedes cars worth another $22,000 as well.   Despite the world best time achieved the previous week at Chicago, the line up in New York was impressive - the best that money could buy, after Beatrice Foods had bought up those they wanted in Chicago with a budget reported to be $3,000,000.   Dixon was back and the supporting cast included such names as Jose Gomez, John Graham, Zak Barie, Gidamas Shahanga, Lasse Viren, Ed Mendoza, Mike Gratton, Dennis Fowles, Dave Edge and Hary Bjorklund.

But running a marathon is more than lining up a bunch of good runners in the peak of condition and expecting the form book to be a good guide to the result.   The marathon is a great leveller: out there on the unyielding tarmac the best laid plans can end up in the sweeper bus.   And so it was on the 28th October 1984 when the weather played the cruellest trick in the book against Fred and his impressive field of hopefuls.  On the Varrazano Narrows Bridge things did not seem too bad: it was only 67 degrees, misty, but those who had managed to get a decent warm up would have noticed that quite soon they were soaking with sweat: the humidity was almost 90%.   So it was that everyone shot away when the cannon fired and the leaders settled into that sub-five minute mile pace they knew they were capable of and which they knew would be necessary to win the race.   After all, hadn't world bests been set here before?   Surely the man whose name would appear in the chronicle of the event after Bill Rodgers, Alberto de Salazar and Rod Dixon would have to get under 2:09.

As the miles rolled by it soon dawned on these men that not all was well.   Shortly after entering Brooklyn, the sun began to beat down, teh temperature rose towards the mid seventies, and the humidity towards 96%.   One by one they called it a day.   The spectators at the 16 mile point on the Manhattan side of the Queensborough Bridge must have thought they were watching some sort of alternative event as a sizable number of the top runners dropped out and made their disconsolate way back to their hotels.  

And so it was that an unknown Italian, Orlando Pizzolato ran his way onto the history books by taking one of the most lucrative prizes in the history of the marathon in the slowest New York marathon for nine years (2:14:53).   While he celebrated after the race and read his congratulatory telegram from Geraldine Ferraro (remember her?) and wondered what the folks back home in Ferrara (geddit?) would think, the hard men from Mercedes Benz were racking their brains to come up with an advertising campaign based on 'Orlando Pizzolato drives a Merc.'   Tom MacNab, your talents are needed at this hour.

The New York Marathon was as always a source of other stories, although none expected that this year would see the race's first fatality, a 48 year old Frenchman, Jacques Bussereau, who collapsed with a heart attack at 14 miles and was dead on arrival at hospital.   Someone who coped with the heat better than she did in the Olympic Games this summer was Gaby Anderson-Schiess, possibly because she was fed up of always being introduced on TV as the girl who finished in LA by staggering over the line, followed by a replay of the video.   She finished  eleventh in 2:42:24.   The wheelchair athletes got a big cheer from the spectators, one of whom reported as having remarked when they came past, ahead of the runners at that point, "These aren't the real guys yet".   "Shut up, fool," said an older man, "these people are as real as it gets!"