Geoff Watt: A Column By Len Johnson

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Few of us, I’d imagine, have run Mt Kilimanjaro, been a guest and training partner of the world’s greatest marathon runner, or worked and run our way around the world in a two-year odyssey.

Geoff Watt did all those things, and more - not bad for a self-professed “ordinary mediocre runner . . . who (is) flat out running a mile in four minutes 40 seconds.

“The AAU will never give you a guernsey,” Watt wrote of Australia’s national governing body, the forerunner to Athletics Australia, “and yet it is possible to know the thrill of international competition and the fellowship of the runners of many nations.”

Watt began his trip early in 1959. He returned to Australia in 1961, taking up his professional life as an optometrist. He married and had four children, one of whom became an Olympic champion.

He also went for a run on Mt Erica, in Victoria’s Gippsland region, one early spring night in 1969 without telling anyone. He died from exposure near the summit.

“I just don’t understand it,” one searcher said. “Why did he go up there at that time of night without telling anyone and without any warm clothing.”

Probably because – as far as you can tell from this distance - that was the sort of thing Geoff Watt had done all his life. He had suffered snow-blindness during his descent from the peak of Kilimanjaro, “and spent two dreadful days stumbling down the slopes to safety.”

Far from being salutary, the experience, Watt wrote, “had a profound affect on me and for a while I was quite fearless.”

I never knew Geoff Watt, but I knew his story. He was well-known on the Melbourne running scene. The night he disappeared, one of Melbourne’s harrier clubs was having an end-of-winter-season party. When word came through that Watt was missing many of those present jumped into their cars and headed off to join the search.

I was reminded about Watt when I met his daughter, Kathy Watt, at this year’s Melbourne Track Classic. She asked me if I could help publicise a memorial run in her father’s name, which I was more than happy to do. It’s on in Warragul this year on 16 October.

Kathy Watt was an accredited photographer at the meeting and also at the world championships in Daegu. She is better-known, however, as the Barcelona 1992 Olympic cycling road race champion. It was a shock gold medal at the time, won in a style of which her father would have heartily approved.

Kathy Watt went off the front of the bunch with a lap to go. The peloton, including the prohibitive favourite, Jeannie Longo of France, judged that the Australian had gone too early, was riding solo, and would soon come back.

Longo wrong-o: Watt kept right on going to win by 20 seconds.

Like her father, Kathy Watt was a runner. A good one, too, but injuries eventually convinced her that she would be better off in an event in which her feet where not hitting the ground. She turned to cycling. Where once she had run everywhere, now Watt rode everywhere. The sight of Kathy Watt pedalling furiously around the streets of inner Melbourne at that time was a familiar one.

As, indeed, would have been the sight of Geoff Watt pretty well anywhere around the world from 1959 to 1961.

You can read a full account of Geoff Watt’s journey by clicking on the ‘Geoff Watt’ tag at www.geoffwattrun.com , including his memorable injunction to a friend indentified merely as ‘Bluey:

“To Bluey – along the way I found two things of importance – To eat well and to sleep dry – All else is profit!”

The way took Geoff Watt initially to the 1959 Boston marathon, where he finished tenth in 2:34:37. Watt sported a beard at that stage and his arrival in Boston – by steamer to Panama, plane to Miami and on a car delivery job to Boston – was a sure-fire attention-grabber. A Boston Globe columnist profiled Watt under the heading: “The Bearded Galloper from Down Under.”

From Boston, Watt toured the rest of North America and Canada. He then hopped across the Pacific to Asia, running marathons in Korea and at Fukuoka in Japan. From there it was through the Middle East to Europe, Britain, the 1960 Rome Olympics and the Kosice marathon. While in England, Watt finished fourth in the London-Brighton ultra of around 54 miles.

It was in Kosice, one of the original and great marathons on the old international circuit, that Watt met Abebe Bikila. On the African leg of the trip, Watt trained with the 1960 and 1964 Olympic marathon champion at Bikila’s base outside Addis Ababa.

Africa, the final continent of Watt’s journey, also brought the ascent of Kilimanjaro and a tenth place finish in the Comrade’s Marathon. From Durban, Watt finally made his way home to Australia.

Which brings me back to the Geoff Watt Memorial Fun Run. It’s on in Warragul on 16 October and, if the prospect of a half-marathon through Gippsland’s rolling hills is too daunting, there is a 10k, a 5k, or 2.5k.

It’s the 41^st running of the event, revived after a hiatus in 2010.

The marathon distance is 42.195km, so the revival is entirely appropriate. From what I’ve learned of him, Geoff Watt was not the sort of bloke to stop at the 40km mark in a marathon, so it is entirely fitting that his memorial race should go the distance, too.