About 70 percent of the audience at Friday’s John Landy Lunch Club were reminded of this when film of Charlene Rendina’s 1:59.0 national record at the Victorian championships went up on the big screens.

I saw that race. So did many others at the lunch. Unprovable assertion warning here - I’d guess that most people there thought that Judy Pollock had led that race before Rendina pulled away in the last 150 metres. I’ve written it that way several times, the most recent just a few days before the lunch in material supplied to The Sunday Age highlighting five performances at the Victorian championships.

Cut the lights. Cue the film. Guess what? Charlene Rendina led at the bell, Pollock clinging to her heels until the final bend.

Even Pollock, who along with Rendina was at the lunch, was surprised. “I’ve always told (Charlene) I led that race,” she said.

Rendina wasn’t. “That was my race,” she said of the record, which still stands.

Pollock, and many of the rest of us, were misled by two facts. One was general - Pollock did lead most of their races; the other was specific – in the national championships three weeks later, also at Olympic Park, Pollock scorched the first lap in 56 seconds, leading by a long way before fading in the last 200.

Rendina won then in 2:00.1 with Pollock running 2:02.1.

This year’s Landy lunch, which also served as the launch for Thursday night’s Melbourne Track Classic, took as its main theme Olympic Park history. I wonder how many other memories were revised by the archive footage.

Still, it was nice to know that there was a huge crowd watching the mile at the 1956 Australian titles when John Landy went back to check on the fallen Ron Clarke before resuming the race, chasing down a 40 yards’ deficit, and winning.

A lesser, though still substantial, crowd attended the 1964 twilight meeting when Clarke took down world record holder Murray Halberg of New Zealand, and the world record, over three miles. Notable on this occasion was the presence of Herb Elliott – in his work suit, no less – crouched on the infield waving Clarke on with 200 metres to go.

Ron Casey and Merv Lincoln did the commentary. Casey was Channel Seven’s head of sport, a great caller and commentator in his own right. Lincoln was the man whose destiny it was to be the second-best Australian behind Landy and then Elliott, which pretty much meant second-best in Victoria, Australia, the Commonwealth and the world.

Clarke also told how he had got the New Zealanders – not only Halberg, but also Olympic 800 and 1500 champion Snell and John Davies – to Melbourne in return for him racing in New Zealand. He had convinced Seven to televise the meeting and the network was to take the unprecedented step of running the athletics into its nightly news service.

The timing was almost scuttled by several false starts in the 100 yards. Casey was almost beside himself. Clarke ran down to the start to tell Olympic starter Judy Patching: “For God’s sake, just fire the gun and don’t call them back, otherwise they’ll pull the coverage.”

Of course, all these stories are only as reliable as someone’s memory, too.

It made me wonder whether some of my other recollections of Victorian championships were in need of ‘revision’. Like over 100 athletes running the heats of the men’s 5000 metres, like heats of the men’s 10,000 metres, like Marian Fisher (now O’Shaughnessy) winning four individual titles one year.

As a journalist, I always made it a rule not to use a statistic unless I’d looked it up. Every time I broke this rule, it seemed, I made an error.

So I checked these memories against the Athletics Victoria results archive. In 1972, there were 61 entrants in the 10,000. Three heats were run on 19 January, with the final on 31 January. In 1980, there were 107 entrants in the 5000 metres heats and five heats were run a week before the final.

Finally, yes, Marian O’Shaughnessy, a prolific winner of titles back then, won the women’s 100, 200 and 400 metres at the main titles in 1978, having won the 400 metres hurdles a week earlier. Cathy Freeman was another who amassed titles in clumps, taking the 100/200/400 treble four years on the trot from 1992 before restricting herself to a mere double in 1996.

Regularly, there were four rounds of the men’s sprints. In 1985, amazingly, there were four rounds of the men’s 800 metres, too – heats on 1 March, quarter-finals on 2 March, semi-final and final on 3 March. At the end of it all, Mike Hillardt won in a very smart 1:46.04 (his career best was 1:45.74). Understandably, he did not double, leaving the 1500 to Peter Bourke.

Where did they all go? These days, there is an almost total disconnect between the club athlete and state, much less national, titles. Sometimes we see this situation reversed, such as the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run on the MCG in the 2006 Victorian titles.

Well, 2011 is the last chance to run at Olympic Park. It’s a different appeal – whereas no-one had ever run on the MCG before, everyone has run at Olympic Park. But it’s going to be very interesting how many people jump (run and throw) at the last chance to run at the Park on 4-6 March.

(Pic: Perth1958)

By Len Johnson

For those of you who think thunderclap performances started with Usain Bolt, meet Herb Elliott.

Fifty years ago on Monday, Herbert James Elliott of Australia won the Rome Olympic 1500 metres in a world record three minutes 35.6 seconds. A paralysing burst along the back-straight with 700 metres to go left his rivals literally gasping for breath. His winning margin was a massive 2.8 seconds. The only greater margin in Olympic history was Kip Keino over Jim Ryun in 1968, in the special circumstances of Mexico City’s 2000 metres-plus altitude and with the pacing assistance of teammate, Ben Jipcho.

Winning an Olympic gold medal is a rare achievement, an Australian male winning one in an Olympic running event an even rarer one. An Australian male winning an Olympic running event in a world record was, and still is, almost unheard of.

In Australian Olympic terms then, Herb Elliott’s was the ultimate achievement. Ralph Doubell’s gold medal in the 800 metres in Mexico in equal-world record time comes close to matching it in athletic  terms; given the external pressures, Cathy Freeman’s gold medal in the Sydney 2000 Olympic 400 metres is also comparable.

In winning the men’s Olympic 1500 metres in world record time, Elliott matched the feat of New Zealand’s Jack Lovelock in 1936. [Two others _ Charles Bennett (GB/1900) and James Lightbody (USA/1904) _ did it back in the days when there were no official world records and the Olympics were nowhere near as competitive.]

So Elliott’s 3:35.6 was every bit as astounding in 1960 Rome as Usain Bolt’s 9.69 and 19.30 in Beijing two years ago. The similarities don’t end there: Elliott was 22 when he stunned the world; Bolt celebrated his 22^nd birthday in between his 100 and 200-metre triumphs in Beijing. Elliott didn’t just beat his opposition, he pulverised them. Bolt likewise enjoyed huge margins of victory.

Unlike the Jamaican sprint superstar, however, Herb Elliott had stamped his authority on his rivals two years before Rome. Co-incidentally, the 2008 Olympic Games opened two days after the 50^th anniversary of another famous Elliott run _ his 3:54.5 world record for the mile in Dublin on 6 August, 1958.

Elliott had a fabulous 1958, beginning with breaking four minutes for the mile for the first time just short of his 20^th birthday. He continued with an undefeated tour of the US west coast, an 880 yards-mile double at the British Empire Games in Cardiff, and world records at both the mile and the 1500 in Europe after the Games.

The mile world record was given almost as much publicity as Elliott’s Olympic victory would be two years later. I vividly recall reading a detailed account of his race splashed across the front page of Melbourne’s evening newspaper, The Herald, complete with a page-wide photo of the finish. Harry Gordon, now the official Australian Olympic historian, reported the race.

That performance took 3.5 seconds off the official world record (still held by John Landy) and 2.7 off the mark set by Britain’s Derek Ibbotson. Second-placed Merv Lincoln ran 3:55.9, about as close as anyone got to Elliott in a big race.

In the 1500, Elliott ran 3:36.0 to beat the previous world record holder, Stanislaw Jungwirth, by three seconds and his record by 2.1.

Elliott retired soon after Rome and has the unique distinction of being undefeated at a mile or 1500 metres as a senior (his one loss ever at either distance, came in a handicap race at school).

Australians, it often seems, prefer ‘larrikin’ heroes _ or perhaps it’s just that most of our heroes either fit that description, or are downright flawed. Think of Dawn Fraser, John Newcombe and Shane Warne, for example. Perfection seems a little anodyne to the average Aussie sports fan.

With his unblemished record, Elliott could have been seen this way. Yet other elements of his character fit snugly with the national psyche. He trained over the dunes at Portsea, linking him with the beach, a quintessential part of the Australian character. This image wasn’t harmed by the true story of him once rescuing his coach, Percy Cerutty, from the raging surf.

Though Cerutty espoused a Stotan _ part Stoic, part Spartan _ creed, and advanced what were then radical dietary notions, Elliott was not beyond the occasional cigarette and drink, another example of the common touch.

One such indulgence came when Elliott and his great rival Merv Lincoln were on the way to Brisbane for a race. Elliott was relaxed, downing a beer and even smoking a couple of cigarettes on the flight. “I’ve got the blighter this time,” Lincoln thought as he led in the final lap off a solid pace, but Elliott burst past to win easily, 3:58.9 to 4:04.8.

Lincoln was devastated. He thought at that stage he was fitter and definitely better prepared, but still he was beaten, and decisively. “I think I lost a bit of fight after that one,” he said years later.

 Elliott’s early retirement, almost universally regarded as premature, sparked great debate as to whether the world saw his best. Some had no doubt _ “he obviously never reached his potential” _ wrote Cordner Nelson and Roberto Quercetani in their middle-distance history, The Milers. Others speculate on how Elliott would have gone against successors Peter Snell, the 1964 Olympic champion, Ryun and Keino.

Elliott has never been swayed. His approach was intense, and the intensity only lasted so long. “The balance changed,” he told me in an interview late in the 1980s. “I can’t redress that. There were other things to do. Running was just a short, deep experience in my life.”

I suppose the one unknown is what might have happened had Elliott not won in 1960. Would he then have continued, which was the response of Roger Bannister, John Landy and Wes Santee to their disappointments at the 1952 Helsinki Games.

5000m - SEC womens 5000m