American middle-distance runner George Young will be remembered most of all for establishing American steeplechasing on the international map, for solidifying the 1952 gold-medal achievement of Horace Ashenfelter. Young placed fifth and third in the 1964 and 1968 Olympic Steeplechase finals and set an American record of 8:30.4. He will also be remembered for his competitive toughness. This toughness was perfectly exemplified near the end of his career (at  age 36) when he had an memorable battle with 21-year-old Prefontaine in the 1972 USA Olympic Trials 5,000. Young’s ongoing reputation as a tough guy was brilliantly captured in the Prefontaine movie Without Limits. In a memorable scene (http://cdn1.anyclip.com/BTCO2tntJhYbu.mp4), Donald Sutherland, playing Coach Bill Bowerman, visits Prefontaine (Billy Crudup) to announce with great gravity: “George Young is in town.” This echoes a classic line in many western movies when locals learn that a famous gunfighter has arrived in town. George Young was indeed a “famous gunfighter” on the American track scene in the 1960s and early 1970s.

“I’m driven, analytical, and a keen observer.” English distance runner Martin Hyman lacked basic speed. He couldn’t beat 2:00 for 800; his best 400 was a pedestrian 57.5. Yet he was able to place 4th in three major track championships, and from 1958 to 1964 he recorded times that even today would put him in the top six of the British rankings for 10,000. On the road he was considered by some as unbeatable. He had notable wins in Spain and Brazil and set many course records. Even in cross-country, which he considered his weakest event, he ran 3rd in the 1961 international championships.

Few runners have appeared on the distance-running scene as dramatically as American Gerry Lindgren. In 1964 while still a schoolboy, he emerged from a remote area of Washington State near the Canadian border to run a series of world-class races. His successes that year took him to the Tokyo Olympics as one of the favorites in the 10,000. Until the 1960s teenagers rarely competed in distance events. It was universally believed that distance running was a mature man’s sport; teenagers were strongly discouraged from running long distances on the road and track. Only in cross-country races were they allowed to run longer distances up to 5,000.

Jean Wadoux emerged in the 1960s as one of the world’s finest middle-distance runners. He was a worthy successor to Michel Jazy, in whose shadow his early career developed. His greatest achievement was a European 1,500 record of 3:34.0 in 1970. At that time it was the second-fastest 1,500 ever recorded. Wadoux also ran the 5,000 in 13:28.0. His competitive record was excellent, although critics have noted his poor record in major competitions. This is unfair. A closer look at his two Olympics and three Europeans shows that he performed well in two of these meets and was handicapped by altitude (Mexico) and by an injury in two others. Only in the 1966 Europeans did he disappoint. Wadoux won many races for his country in international matches and was French national 1,500 champion for seven consecutive years. When he moved up to the 5,000 later in his career, he posted impressive wins over Keino and Clarke and won a European silver medal in his last year of competition.

   “Quiet, chivalrous, generous to opponents”: the Olympian mind-set of Hyla Stallard Athletics successes in Great Britain in the years between the World Wars, 1918 to 1930, were socially divisive. The Olympic gold medals were usually won by undergraduates or graduates from Oxford and Cambridge Universities – most notably, Harold Abrahams, Lord Burghley, Guy Butler, Douglas Lowe, Tom Hampson, Godfrey Brown. Even the iconic New Zealander, Jack Lovelock, was at Oxford. Titles in the more prosaic 50 kilometres road walks were taken instead by less privileged members of society; one of them a railway-depot labourer, the other a motor-racing mechanic. Of the 586 athletes who represented Great Britain in that era, 118 were from Oxford or Cambridge.

    Choosing 12 kilometres as the distance for one of your first races at the age of 14 is not the wisest of decisions, but everything turned out alright for Luigi Beccali in the long run – or rather, one could say, in a series of shorter runs. An Olympic gold medal and two World records at 1500 metres are enviable achievements by any measure. In purely statistical terms, he was the first man run under 3min 50sec for the distance twice – and, for that matter, three times – and though this might not seem too impressive now it’s a feat which is justifiably still thought to be of great significance more than 90 years later by anyone with a real sense of athletics history. 

 In the wake of “The Gateshead Clipper”, Jack Potts, an overlooked Olympic hero      Jack Potts, fourth from right, in the winning English cross-country team (Paris, 1935) There was a time, back in the days of amateurism, when some British athletes of real international class missed out on the Olympic Games because they could not afford to lose their income while they were away from work. Now, in this age of rabid professionalism, the selectors choose only to send those competitors who they think could win medals in the belief that the greater the number of medals the more generous will be central funding. Other athletes not so highly thought of are denied their big-time opportunity, even when the necessary finance is available. No thought seems to be given to the idea that young and promising athletes not yet ready to challenge the very best would benefit from the experience of going to a Games, and would do rather better next time round.