Athletics History Buff : By Len Johnson

History _ most of us interact with it three ways. We make our bit of it, small or large as the case may be; we become history; in between times, we show some interest in it.

That interest waxes and wanes. Sometimes it depends on the subject. Maybe the American Civil War moves you in strange and mysterious ways; maybe, like Eric Olthwaite in Michael Palin's Ripping Yarns, you get excited about precipitation records in West Yorkshire, shovels and black pudding. Sometimes it is the medium _ does a subscription to The History Channel imply you were a history nerd at school?

Anyway, I've become a bit of an athletics history buff. Partly that's through researching The Landy Era, partly it's because I've always had a history bent and partly it's because I've reached a stage in life where, barring unforeseeable advances in medical science, I've got more history behind me than in front.

In any case, my historical antennae were tweaked this week by an e-mail from a former colleague at The Age.

"I've found a scrapbook of Age athletics articles," the e-mail ran, "primarily by Bruce Welch, dated from Oct 1956 to Aug 1957. Names like Landy, Strickland, Cuthbert and Kuts leapt out as I flicked through the book."

. . . . "Rather than throw it into the wheelie bin for recycling, would you like it?" Would I what!

Bruce Welch was The Age's athletics correspondent in the immediate post-war period, including the Melbourne Olympic Games. His contemporaries were people like Harry Gordon, Ken Knox and Ron Carter. Harry Gordon chronicled Landy's career, the 1956 Olympics, Herb Elliott's fabulous European races in 1958 and went on to become chief executive of Queensland Newspapers and, after his "retirement", official Australian Olympic historian.

Ken Knox was a Victorian swimming representative, a WW II commando, a keen surfer, golfer and fisherman and a long-time sports' reporter for The Age. Ron Carter was chief football and Olympic reporter when I joined The Age back in 1986, a dual role which harks back to earlier times of less specialised sports journalism. Ron found his own way to his first Olympics in Helsinki in 1952 and covered every Games from then till Barcelona in 1992.

It's the second of Bruce Welch's books of clippings to come into my possession. A former sports editor called me over on the day of his departure and handed me the first, a thick black exercise book labelled: Athletics, August 1948 to November 1952. "You're the only person I can think of who might be interested in this,'' he said.

That first book was an invaluable source of first-hand accounts of Victorian interclub, interstate, national and international athletics while I was writing The Landy Era. The second gives similar accounts of the early part of Herb Elliott's and Merv Lincoln's career, and the budding rivalry between the athletes and, more bitterly, their respective coaches, Percy Cerutty and Franz Stampfl.

Welch reported on a pre-Melbourne Olympic Games meeting at Puckapunyal, an army base just outside Seymour, 110 kilometres north of Melbourne. This, incidentally, was the meeting at which NSW distance runners Al Lawrence and John Russell stopped off for a race while driving from Sydney to Melbourne to compete in the Games. Lawrence found Dave "the Flying Milkman" Stephens waiting to race him over three miles.

Merv Lincoln won the mile that day from Murray Halberg, Jim Bailey and Chris Chataway, among others. Bailey, who had sensationally beaten Landy in the US in May that year, finished a well-beaten third. He was asked whether he could do better.

"Of course I can," the ever-feisty Bailey shot back. "What a stupid question. Sharpen yourselves up."

Later clippings report on the retirements of Bailey and Landy and the deferment of Elliott's national service obligations, leaving him free to pursue his athletics career without the impediment of three months in one of the armed services followed by supplementary call-ups. Given "Nasho" had sabotaged Ron Clarke's bid for Olympic selection in 1956, this might have been a more significant piece of good fortune than mere reading suggests.

In all, Bruce Welch's scrapbook is a treasure trove of athletics history that I'm sure will be mined time after time as that history takes on increasing significance. Now, if only the 1953 to 1956 volume would somehow materialise!


 

Len Johnson was a long serving athletics writer for The Age newspaper in Melbourne, and is widely considered one of the best athletics writers in the world. He is the author of a new book on Australian running in the 1950s and 60s entitled The Landy Era. To order your copy, grab the order form here , or visit Melbourne Books

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