Cyfweliad gyda'r rhedwr Steve Brace

Disgrifiad

STEVE BRACE
a runners’ tale


I was born on 7 July 1961. I live in Bridgend. I was brought up in a village outside of Bridgend, Kenfig Hill, very much embedded in a rugby family, my father very much a key volunteer of the Kenfig RFC. Played rugby in the early years, mixed with a few other little sports and I really found my running coming from that context of getting fit for my rugby. Really enjoyed my childhood, played all school sport, wore glasses which obviously made things a little bit difficult in the rain, in the wet. I always enjoyed and was relatively good at athletics. I was fairly small for my age, which didn’t help as well, especially on the rugby field. I just drifted through many sports, until really found running.

my focus sport

It was in the early years of senior rugby, playing for Kenfig Hill seconds and thirds, that I found that I was half reasonable on the days that the pitches were flooded, when we went for the run round Aberbaiden … and really progressed from there into fun-running. It was that time in the early ‘80s - very much the big marathon-running boom - and everyone was doing fun-runs and marathons and really just enjoying it. I found it hard work, and over a number of years, it evolved to be my focus sport.

We used to have, at that time, rugby club athletics, down in Morfa Stadium, about five, six in a team: the Mark Titleys, the rugby players, and the Glen Webbes, they’d be sprinting. Alan Martin would be throwing the discus. And this was a Wednesday Night League. And that inspired me to be a bit more of an athlete in some ways. And being a very practical person - I’d come through a very practical background (I was a carpenter by trade) - stayed on in sixth form, but ended up having a trade, and I worked in a school. So I’m very much a practical and methodical person, and I thought, “There is not much to this running game”. I quickly progressed, taking big chunks off my time, off the marathon, really analysing then what makes you better, running shorter races, because in the early years, I was doing six, seven marathons a year which was excessive, and it wasn’t great on the body, either. So, I started running half-marathons and 10Ks and I mixed rugby with athletics and with road-running for many years, really until I went to college.

After a number of years working, I actually went back and did a degree in design and did a BA Hons up at Newport. And it was there that it really came home that I could be a proper athlete. And rugby and athletics were never really compatible, getting smashed up on a Saturday, literally on the field and then, in the evening, in the drinking culture, and then trying to run your best performances on a Sunday. It was really that environment, at Caerleon or Newport Harriers which took me to another level, although I was running very reasonably.

I think I became Welsh marathon champion in 1987 so I learnt very quickly, from going right through from my first marathon in over three hours to, you know, 10 years later being at the Olympics and running 2.10. And fairly!

A lot of learning was done, a lot of analysing and progressed. Caerleon had a very strong club in Newport at the time, and a guy called Mike Rowlands who was advising Steve Jones, and I used to join in their sessions. So, I was up there for four years. I’d run over to Cwmbran, four or five miles, then I’d do a session, then I’d run back. Or I’d run down to Newport from Caerleon, then do the run, and then run back. That’s where a lot of my earlier apprenticeship was, in terms of building up the high mileage which you really need to sustain an endurance marathon running.

a natural ability for endurance

I was no good at 100m. Essentially, I was good at the eighth, ninth, tenth 100m. I was very good at 7s, only because the wingers on the other teams could always do the first length of the field and beat me but, come the endurance of doing the fifth, eighth, tenth 100m, I always had a natural ability for endurance. And I think it just came from many hours playing football, rushing home from school to play football for four or five hours until it got dark. Some of it came from that. And you just build up an attitude, an aptitude, to, in effect, a level of discomfort from fatigue. And I think that tolerance, that puts people into different classes of the sport. Obviously, physiologically, there’s the fast 25ers and the slow 25ers, and it was ironical that many years’ later, more towards the end of the career, when I did have a lot of testing done, luckily I’d found the right event. My VO2 max - my capability of processing oxygen - I could never ever have been anything better than a 10,000m runner. I really didn’t have the capacity. Between physiology and aptitude, I’d fallen into the right event, through accident rather than design.

competitive by nature

Long term focus. I am able to look a long way down the line. I understand today, the short, medium and long term. When I started running, we were in a culture, got into the Club culture. You just went out for runs; didn’t really know why you did it. You just went out and did it because everyone else did it. And through a period of time, you build up your tolerance to endurance, and you become better. I am very competitive, whether it’s tiddlywinks or whatever. Everything I do. I am competitive by nature. And I learnt quickly, along the way. Very methodical. Training diaries. Always looking back. Analysis. Never was coached in my life. I coached myself in term of what I needed to do. Made many mistakes. When you get success, it’s all yours, but the failures are all yours, as well.

an outside pair of eyes at home

Obviously, the home life was very important, and my wife was the former Welsh marathon record holder herself. The top of her career was before I really started. She was the top athlete in the early ‘80s and slowly the roles reversed. Having that outside pair of eyes, at home, obviously helped, and having someone, a partner, who understood what it took to be an endurance athlete, just going out there running morning, evening, you know, week in, week out.

My children are both involved in sport, through different routes. My son, he runs. He’s not as competitive. He’s not really built for running. My daughter has enjoyed an excellent athletics career to date, but unfortunately, her academic career is slowly taking over now, due to the amount of work and other pressures. Teenagers. Unfortunately, both of them suffered from asthma throughout their careers which affected the enjoyment level as well. I was lucky enough to be fairly injury-free and had really no barriers to me being successful, other than my own determination.

I was lucky enough to be in a very good environment here, in the Bridgend area. We’ve got everything, you know. We’ve got sand, we’ve got great roads, we’ve got flood-light cut grass. And slowly, a great Club formed around Bridgend.

turning professional

Through the mid-‘80s, I started to progress. 1987 / 1988, I was really starting to make big inroads in the world scene. And European. And the big point came in 1988. I did the London Marathon which was the Olympic trial for Los Angeles at that time. And I finished just one place behind a certain Charlie Spedding who went on to win a bronze medal over in LA. It really made me think, “I am that close now. What can I be four years down the line?”

Those four years came and went with a lot of success. I’d left college, become a teacher. It was the Commonwealth Games in 1990 for which I had difficulty getting time off because it was in Aukland, in January, in term time. So, I decided, at that point, to become a full-time athlete, to give it a go. I was earning a little bit, not a lot. I came back and within six weeks, the Paris Marathon and then, in the autumn, to win Berlin and a lot of other major races which sustained me as a professional athlete for another nine and a half / ten years in effect.

So, I was very much, by the early nineties, on the treadmill of being focussed, and selection came around. In marathons, obviously, you have a lot longer lead-in for qualifying for Olympics, and the determining factor was that I won the Berlin marathon in 2:10. This didn’t put me top in Britain, but definitely put me in the picture, again because of my consistency. My potential was still improving. I was running and racing well in Europe and I had a good number of quality performances other than the Berlin result behind me. I won the Paris Marathon twice. So, it was all fairly favourable. I won’t say it was predictable, but I knew I was in the frame for that Olympic berth.

being the best that I could for that day in spain

Barcelona was a fantastic occasion … what I thought would be the pinnacle of my athletics’ career. I’d only yet run the Paris Marathon for Wales a few years earlier, so Montjuic I was very familiar with in terms of the hill, the stadium, and the city and environs, and how much as a Basque region I likened it very much to Wales. I felt an affinity to the area. So, when that selection came and I knew I was on my way, it was, about, you know, being the best that I could for that day in Spain.

Preparation went well. Myself and my colleague, Paul Evans - who was a 2.9 marathon runner, but concentrated very much on 10,000m running - we took ourselves over to Europe to get some summer acclimatisation because, as I remember, that summer wasn’t very warm. And we ended up in Barcelona ahead of the Games. We stayed with a family about twenty kilometres outside of the Camp and it was great. Being in that environment, the enthusiasm, the vibrancy of the Olympics. But what I did then, I actually came home the week before, just to freshen up, to get my Olympic kit. But also, to go back as an Olympic athlete. Some people went straight over to Spain, Santander. They’d end up going straight to the Olympics. And it got weary for them. So, I went back - I’d already been to the Olympics once and checked in - so, I went back three days before to get focussed, so I was ready for the Olympic Marathon.

The problem with the marathon is it’s always last day. Everyone else through the week is having success and failure. Some peoples’ athletics competitions finish early. They are not always as courteous as they can be but, yeah, the Camp there was fantastic. It was flat, right on the seafront, fantastic running. At that time, it would have been no good to me for the three weeks prior to the Games, because a lot of my training was off-road, on nice soft paths, you know. I enjoy the off-road running here of Merthyr Mawr and Newbridge Fields and that was a significant part of my athletic career. So, the Olympics was new. It was a different environment. I could control my own destiny, and all of a sudden you’re going to the environment where everybody wants to be part of you… and it’s really being a full-time athlete, you know.

barcelona

The problem with Barcelona was it was a four o’clock / half past four start, and 20 kilometres out of town. But, in hindsight, it was great because it meant that we finished in the Olympic Stadium at the Closing Ceremony, which was absolutely an amazing atmosphere.

Race day came. A little bit of rain overnight, hit the high temperatures as it did every afternoon. Sun burn a problem. But I’d been over there a while. I was very much acclimatised to what to expect. Got ferried out to the start. Myself, Paul Davies-Hail and Dave Long were the team. We knew each other very well from many races together, on the domestic calendar, as well.

The start of the Olympic Marathon. No championship marathons are ever quite the same. Every one is unique. But there we were, in a tent, on the roadside, 20 kilometres away, in just a little village, having to really pinch yourself. This was the Olympic Marathon. Obviously aware of the great media attention, etc, outside, but still very warm, trying to keep cool rather than warm up. Race started, and the first thing … how even warmer it was running because we were running with the wind, as well. So, it was a little bit of a problem. It was 20 kilometres straight into town and my early memories of the race were trains. There was a train accompanying us, roadside, all the way with everybody hanging out, stopping at train stations, my parents included. My wife and family were all there, in this entourage. And into the city, did the usual tour of the city, the Sagrada Familia, the cathedral, and I was working my way through the field. Mid-thirties, all going very well, controlling the pace, because again it was attrition, heat and humidity, which is a major problem with championship running. And then, it was up the dreaded Montjuic which was essentially three miles uphill to finish in the Stadium. They banned all the public because of the narrow pathways, how close, lack of security, so you went from the buzz and the atmosphere up the winding path, up through the Botanical Gardens, and I was running very well. I knew a number of people were ahead of me. As we approached the Stadium, the only person that passed me in the whole race was a certain Rob de Costella from Australia.

So, it was under the stands. You were aware there was a buzz and you got in and it was the heat, a cauldron of sand, the noise, the flashes! It was half past six by that time, it was getting semi-dark, floodlights on. And Rob was just 20m in front of me, and I thought, “Get on the tracks. 300m now. I’ll beat him and get there.” So, going down the back straight, I picked up the pace, and I’m catching, going round the top bend, my stomach going a bit through the exertion. And, as I was going up the straight, just getting to his shoulder, I started feeling a bit sick. It was just the sheer effort and the fluid I’d taken on board, and I glanced up. Thousands of people, they’d honed in to me and him, waiting for the sprint on the home straight and me thinking I was going to be sick now in front of a hundred million people. I pulled back, not to be the person who threw up over the Olympic track.

Great event, finished 26th, just a mere three and a half minutes behind the winner. Now, if you look at most Olympic results, three and a half minutes behind any winner of the Olympics would put you well up there. It was a very strong time for marathon running. It was a very strong race... you know ... the world’s best were in Barcelona and I got the best out of myself on that day. And I was first British athlete in the race, as well, which was very pleasing.

being a professional athlete

You’ve got to remember, this was all pre-Lottery. So, you know, I was a full-time athlete so I could sustain a living, an issue which was going to make some difficult decisions for me later on. At this time, the decisions weren’t difficult because I’d only just embarked on being a professional athlete. To earn a living to run was very important. I knew what worked for me: running isn’t rocket science, to be honest. You do the simple things well and you’re going to get a large measure of success. Doing it well when you want to do it, not when it happens by accident, is something which you get to learn, you get to understand your body, you get to know your training. And you get to analyse what makes you good, what makes you better, how much training you can tolerate, building that up over a long period of time. I used to hit 130 miles a week, 80 miles a week, per year for many of my years. Injury prevention is a key part, and life-style management, and for me, it was just to make sure that I keep earning a living and have a lifestyle. I knew what worked.

making things complicated

During the nineties, we had a fantastic team. I think we had nine Great Britain marathon internationals in and around Bridgend training. It was a great environment to be in, in this area. It was a very good time for endurance running. Now, we haven’t quite got those centres of development, of good athletes passing down knowledge, etc. to our up-and-coming aspiring endurance athletes. The whole sport, generally, has become so scientific and technical. Endurance running is fairly simplistic. I think there is now a whole culture of making things complicated where there’s no need to.

It’s about week-in, week-out training, day-in, day-out. I needed people around me to do that sort of work and commitment. The centres of development then were the clubs. They were the hub; there were the people with knowledge. Society was different; sport was far more important. Today, there are far more distractions. Endurance running is a long-term commitment. From when I started in 1981, it took me six to eight years to really get to grips with building on the training, you know, year on year, to be able to cope with the training loads. Because it’s fine to say, “I can do 100 miles a week”, but how many can you do and can you do them year in, year out? And can you shape your training to the championships, because the Olympics come and go? You can be the best person in the world but if you don’t do it on the right day … It’s harder in the marathon, you know. You see 100m runners running 15, 20, 30 times a year. Marathon runner, at that level, usually run about twice. So, it’s a very important to be able to get it right, at the right time, on the day.

ways of avoiding running

You’ve got to understand, people now have the opportunity for far more sport. There weren’t that many sports to do many years ago. People are now cycling who may have been running years ago. There’s also not the road, the event infrastructure around. Many races have now gone by the board because of increasing costs, because they don’t like races run on the road. And let’s be honest, cross-country isn’t that appealing in the middle of winter for many people. People now have a lot of ways of avoiding running. It was embedded in British culture, previously, but now, pole-vaulting, hurdles are far more attractive. There are some lovely indoor athletics event facilities now in Wales. And so, yeah, it may be endurance has been the looser to where everybody used to go and run down the athletics club. I’d love to be a cyclist, now. It is exactly the same as an endurance runner. They just apply it a different sphere of sport.

And, during my time, the Africans hadn’t mastered the marathon and I was very lucky as a full-time athlete. They were just emerging. They had done very well over 10,000m on the track, but they just hadn’t mastered the discipline of training. By mid to late nineties, the Africans were being a dominant force and now it is saturation in terms of rankings. And, you know, they are, physiologically, a superior running machine. That is the reality.

The complexity and diversity of athletics is an advantage and a disadvantage. People love athletics. I think it’s the second most watched armchair sport. Ironically, they don’t want to see it in a stadium, but they love to sit and see people run, throw and jump. I think it’s that which is appealing to many, the marrying up of athletics performance.

When I first started I did it for the joy and for the love of sport. You see the joy of the youngsters, enjoying being the best that they can. I don’t think that will ever change. The difference now is that they can go in a whole plethora of different sports where years ago far more were targeted into athletics. And obviously, the success of rugby and football, particularly at the younger ages and the number of clubs has had a fairly detrimental effect on athletics’ clubs. And, you know, athletics facilities are a burden, a bit of a white elephant. The throwers often struggle to get the time because of the football matches. So, there are a few challenges ahead, with possibly summertime football. Where’s athletics go then? At the same time, I think it will still be appealing to everyone, and at the Olympics, we saw that again, the fact that athletics is such a world-wide sport.

Coaching and officiating infrastructure is massive for our sport. And some of those are the biggest challenges. I think we’ll always get good talented athletes. It’s making sure that we have an infrastructure of competition and appropriate competition and availability of that, to make sure the talented does come through. But we are in a good position. The world of athletics is going to different levels, now. We are struggling in some events to keep up with it. In others we are, and UK Athletics is, well prepared for the future. And although Beijing was maybe not as successful in actual medals, we have to look at how many athletes we got in the final, and a couple of fourth places. We’re there in so many events. In some events, we are a long way off and I don’t think we can hope to get close.

A targeted approach is the way forward, concentrating on what we are good at, at the very top end, but not forgetting what is the base and what is the grass roots from where these athletes come, the opportunities.

two pay-days a year

After the highlight of Barcelona, I went back to earning a living. But, of course, for athletics, there are many other championships. We’ve got the Commonwealth Games, we’ve got the European championships, the World Championships, so, there’s really a focus for every year. My dilemma was that they’re not pay-days for me, to make a living. I wasn’t very good at 10,000m or half-marathon running, so it was very limited income generation from the shorter events, so, consequently, I gravitated to being a very specific marathon runner. My tests show that I had chosen the right event.

Primarily, you just get two pay-days a year, and then you’ve got to finish. So, I became consistent at running a pay-day once or twice a year, and then tried to fit in a championship. I know it sounds ironical, ‘trying to fit in a championship’, but I had to live at the end of the day. So, I missed a couple of championships, but the World I did fit in, you know, a Commonwealth, a European Championship. And I progressed through that time. I ran well, leading up to Barcelona, had a good couple of runs in New York. Then, I started to develop a few knee problems, through the high mileage I was doing. Always had a lot of stretching and treatment. I always made sure that I was in the best shape I could, at all times. Yes, I was tired, but I always had massages, jacuzzi baths, to make sure I was relaxed. I did have the ability. If I put myself on the line, I was the best I could be, you know. I always remember the surgeon, John Fairclough, saying I was a Skoda, not a Rolls Royce. But I maximised my potential.

I started earning money while I was teaching, while I was in college, and it wasn’t enough to live on. I was lucky to get an Adidas contract which supplied me with all my kit. They used to have a race series which was a little bit of bonus money, there. I had an agent. I sometimes spent three weekends in a month racing abroad, as well. I’d be back and fore to Europe a couple of times a month, because there was always money out there. I always had a bit of appearance money, not great, but it was enough to keep the money coming in, and then, it was basically putting all the eggs in one basket and making sure I had good pay days, spring and autumn every year, to make sure we had enough to live on.

There were times where I had a bit more of a comfort zone; there were times when I didn’t. It was quite pioneering at the time because there weren’t many professional athletes. I had a friend who was an accountant. I was actually in the entertainment bracket because there was no such thing as a full-time athlete, then. And yes, I’ve learnt for myself all the tax side of things. I did no more training as a full-time professional than I did being a teacher trying to squeeze in ten miles before the start of the day. The difference was I had the rest and recovery in time for preparation to get the most out of myself. And that was the key factor. And yeah, it was just through endorsements. There was quite a bit of reasonable prize money around the UK - I say reasonable, a couple of hundred quid here and there - and at that time, that was enough to keep ticking over. It was a bit of pressure at times to continually finish because, you know, your appearance money was usually dependant on putting in a half reasonable performance, and you only got appearance money having got twenty miles as well, so you couldn’t just turn up and not do much. But that’s where my consistency really came from, making sure that I had a pay day. I had a young family, two children at the time, so it was all very important.

People say, you know, I’ve been lucky money-wise. Yeah, I was sometimes lucky to be in the place at the right time at the right race with not many good athletes. But then, at other times, I think you make your own luck in life, as well as in sport, and it’s about doing the right thing at the right time, and when you’ve got yourself in the right situations through preparation, you know the anecdote, “The more I do, the luckier I get”. And that’s very much a philosophy now: I help a lot of athletes, I coach a lot of group, club athletes, as well as a few elite athletes. It’s about, if you don’t do it in training you can’t hope to do it in a race situation, unless you’ve gone through it time and time again, the race-craft of training, you know, putting yourself in the right position, so that the subconscious really knows what it is like, you rehearse it often enough. And I say, it just comes down to repetition of miles, week in, week out. It’s not rocket science, athletics. A little bit of speed work, a little bit of long-distance work, you know, looking after yourself, and rest and recovery, and getting the appropriate race planned. It’s one of the simplest, simpler elements to do right. As long as you’ve got the right sort of person, you know. Attitude and aptitude.

atlanta

I had a couple of knee operations to clean out my knees from a bit of debris, going into Atlanta. The only time I didn’t run a marathon for nearly a year was in 1994 going into ‘95, and then I came back and ran Houston in January, and again, knocked out a 2:10 marathon. And that, with another one, really reinforced my position into the Atlanta team for 1996. I wasn’t the first choice. Paul Evans who sort of mirrored my career - who’d come from fun-running, from working in a shoe factory - he’d made it and he actually had got selected for the 10,000m and the marathon, but it had never really been a goer that he was going to do both events. So, I was more or less reserve. And then I got called up into the third spot, behind Richard Neruker. And Peter Whitehead.

I was troubled with my knee that time. I ran to the best of my ability. Again, the weather at Atlanta was a severe problem. As with all championships, you train in reasonable climates. You do all of the big world cities, all the marathons in reasonable climates, but you end up going to a championship to a warmer climate, because that is what the spectators like. And, yeah, I survived it. It wasn’t a great performance. And that was going to be the end of my career.

I had trained a lot in Florida, so Paul Evans and myself actually took ourselves down out of Tallahassee (the Great Britain training camp), down to St Petersburg beach, just outside Tampa Bay. It was very familiar. I knew a lot of runners down there, and I’d been training there most springs on the golf courses. I didn’t do a lot in Tallahassee and just went back to Atlanta a couple of days before the marathon, to get the best out of ourselves and to put ourselves in the best possible mental and physical shape as we could. The Atlanta camp wasn’t great. It was in the middle of a city. Training facilities were difficult, so minimum time there. It was all about performance. I’d had a lot of great experience in camps, and Atlanta wasn’t the same high as Barcelona. Very commercial. Early morning start, few people on the streets, finished in the Olympic stadium, but it didn’t have that Barcelona high rate.

back in the pack

It was a decision that I never really regretted, you know. After Atlanta, it was more or less time to pack up, but, ironically I came back. I had a knee operation and started jogging and - mainly because I’d been a honed athlete for many years - I got fit fairly quickly, and I ran a reasonable half marathon. I’d always advocated that if you are reasonably good at the half marathon, you can, with reasonable application, run the marathon. So, I put myself on the line in London with a view of actually finishing my marathon career with a Welsh vest on in Kuala Lumpar in the Commonwealth Games in 1998, instead of with a GB vest in Atlanta. I squeezed out a 2:16 in London which put me on the team for Wales and what was my last international, and ran OK, finished ninth, in Kuala Lumpar. But that was it. It was the 52nd marathon of my career which was really time to call it a day. I say it was my 52nd. It wasn’t my last. I did actually do one for fun the other day, in New York. I went back and just for a bit of a bet went round, and enjoyed that. Four hours plus! I finished in the dark. It was actually quite a slog. I’d finished in the top ten every time I’d been to New York, previously.

I went back to where I came from. My last marathon was jogging with the masses as I did at the start of my career doing the Peoples’ Marathon in over three hours up in Birmingham.

being a Welshman

I think all athletes are selfish a little bit and, you know, first and foremost, I run for myself. Vests were and weren’t important. I think people who knew the athlete, knew I always represented Wales. The colour of the vest doesn’t really mean who you are representing. It was never really a problem. You’d always have a Welsh flag. The British flag was always secondary, you know. You were Welsh first and foremost whether it was a British vest or not. It was just understood that to compete at the Olympic Games you have to wear a GB vest.

From a pragmatic point of view, even if we had a Welsh team, we wouldn’t have that big a team, because you’d only send athletes that wouldn’t be embarrassed at an Olympic Games. There’s nothing worse as an athlete to be put in an environment that you know you are out of your depth in, and, as much as it’s nice to be there, you still don’t embarrass yourself. And that’s what the Commonwealth Games and other championships are for, the pathway that athletes know. There’s the pathway you come up through the clubs, run for your region, run for your nation, and hopefully, you get to the Commonwealth Games, then you make to the Europeans, then you hopefully make the World and the Olympic championships.

professional culture

We have a far more professional culture, today. I think athletes are honed from the years of investment into having the right people around them. We have great psychologists, physiologists, technicians in the labs, etc., and sport has moved on from the amateur days of just doing it for the honour. People want to be the best, and want to do their best, whatever that is. The preparation of athletes is far better. People are very much more focussed. And, of course, the funding is to get medals at the Olympics, so people really know what they are there for. In my day, it was important for me to get a pay-day in a Paris Marathon or a New York Marathon.

The money helps. I was in the lucky position of being funded to do my sport for many years and it does pay dividends. However, I would say, I know some athletes who would benefit from having something else other than their sport, to realise there is a life and a reality outside of what can be a very closed community in sport.

Lottery funding was just coming in as I was finishing my career, in the mid nineties. What would it have meant to me? I made it nine and a half years through funding myself out of the sport. Having to run for a living was a huge incentive, a huge drive to make sure I was successful. So, I don’t think it would have made much difference to me. It may have made me change my racing programme because I had to race, to get money in, on a continual basis to eke out a living. So, I think I could have focussed far better and I could have been slightly different in the method of getting to where I wanted to be. I may have been a worse athlete because, as I said, I like to control my own destiny.

putting something back

Now, I am going down the sports development route and it’s nice to put back into the sport some help. I was lucky enough to get the Director of Athletics job back in 1999, more or less after the Commonwealth Games in 1998, and I’ve been at what has now been a huge turn-around, you know, of sport in that time. The evolution of sport, it has become a higher priority. The funding into sport, we’ve got far more professionalism now than we ever had. When I first started, I think we were just four employees, based out of a small room in the top of Morfa Stadium. Now, Welsh Athletics is nearly twenty-odd staff, with a large turnover. It’s now a huge undertaking with the expectation that comes with that.

At grass-roots level, the sport’s the same. We still have clubs. We still have youngsters trying to run, jump and throw. The difference is we have higher pathways and the interventions of top quality coaches, and that’s really made the difference.

sprinting when it hurts

I don’t want to name names but some of the best endurance runners in the world, they’re not the most elegant looking runners, but what sets them apart is their desire, their desire to win, that aptitude and application, how they can apply themselves in situations, self-belief. And that’s the difference between champions / winners and losers. Some people are runners, some people are racers. And I was very much a racer. I could always get so much out of myself by wanting to beat somebody.

I was lucky enough to win many of my marathons in sprint finishes. How do you sprint at the end of twenty-six miles? What do you do to even practice sprinting? Really, again, it’s just, you do, it’s in the training. You always finish fast, so you’ve got the mental thought processes, the hurt, of sprinting when it hurts. Sometimes, you can play on peoples’ minds by just hanging in there. If you believed you had a big sprint finish, you could usually rally. And then it’s the application and execution. You know that when you make your break, whether it’s 50m or 150m, that you can sustain it to the line. I was second in the Houston Marathon by a second but I won many marathons against people who potentially were a lot faster, but I knew what to do, when to do it, and that just comes through practice, practice and practice.

funding for medals

I think government agendas are varied. At one end of the scale, UK Sport are giving the most successful sports more money to win more medals. It’s a propaganda machine to make sure that Britain is up there with the best as a sporting nation. And the other end of that, then, we have the Welsh Assembly Government really trying to get the healthiest, fittest nation, with everybody active. And to be honest, there’s a lot of investment into people, into schools, into school sports. We have more professionals in sport than we ever have.

We’ve got people helping and delivering sports from grass roots. At clubs, we’re still very reliant on the valued volunteers, many clubs. Volunteers are the life blood of athletics, and they always will be, but it gets to the point where the more professional view and vision has to come in, and there is increasing funding there. I suppose time will tell if we get it right.

We have issues; not enough people do sport, or do enough activity, particularly the way diet and the current culture is. It seems whatever was in America is coming here. It’s worrying when you see the trend analysis of where Britain as a nation is now. Your school child is not as fit and healthy and has the abilities that it did 10, 15, 20 years ago. And that is a worry. Your basic athlete or your basic pupil is not as fit. So, put in a club environment, it takes a long time to get a reasonable athlete. It is increasing getting a more difficult challenge.

As a nation, we are uplifted by sport. One of the saddest things is that people can’t realise the benefits of sport, not only when the Olympics come, or when we do well, but all the time. I think there should be far more in the sport industry, into sport, into making sure there’s community facilities. Every town in France has a sport community hall with activities.


interview conducted by Phil Cope on 16 December ??