Running the wrong way

A bit older now, the column has been catching up with some of them.

Alan Storey, then a 41-year-old Durham bank clerk, was England's marathon coach. Now he works for the London Marathon, is seconded to UK Athletics as director of the Endurance Performance Centre in Twickenham and worries about his sport.

"There are hundreds of people running round and there's nothing wrong with that, but the standards at the front are very poor," he says.

In 1983, 43 Blackheath Harriers completed the London Marathon in under three hours.

This year there were five.

"You could probably say the same about the Croxdale 10. Once there'd be a whole group of people under 50 minutes, now the same number are under 60."

His father George, a former Roddymoor miner, was 69 when he competed in the Veterans' 10k on the Edinburgh "fringe". Smashing chap, he died seven years ago.

"I'm starting to look very much like him," says Alan.

"I have a shave in the morning and think 'Bloody hell, that's my dad looking back at me. It's quite disconcerting, really."

Paul Curran, a double cycling gold medal winner in 1986, hasn't ridden competitively since breaking his back ten years later.

A motor bike ran into the back of me," he says.

"A few vertebra got splintered, I had to have some metalwork put in and my spine got pinched a bit."

The former ICI apprentice spent nine weeks in the spinal injuries unit at Hexham General and underwent two operations.

It was another year before he again got on a bike. "I was starting to put on weight," he says, though there was more spare fat on an anorexic carrot.

Now 41, still in Thornaby, he's unemployed. "I'm a househusband, do the school run, just ride a bike for pleasure. I have to say that I enjoy it."

Charlie Spedding, marathon man and former Ferryhill pharmacist, sold his Gateshead pharmacy business two years ago and is now "trying" to write a book.

"Basically it's an autobiography, but I hope there'll be a few insights.

"I hesitate to call it sports psychology, but there'll be a slant on how to get your head around things."

Occasionally used as an adviser by England athletics coach Lindsay Dunn, he still runs occasionally - "you wouldn't call it training, more going out for a breath of fresh air."

We'd encountered him last year, when Charlie was invited to open a church flower festival in his native Croxdale.

"It was," he says, "the most daunting thing I've done in my life."

Max Coleby, former Whessoe apprentice and Darlington council worker, was athletics promotions manager for Nike and took over a small hotel near the Games Village as the "Nike House."

He still remembers how a giant inflatable Nike shoe - "about 18ft long by four feet high" - was blown from its moorings on the Games' windswept final day.

"It was causing chaos in the street, hundreds of people stuck behind it and a huge policeman, scrambled egg all over his hat, who didn't see the funny side at all.

"At one point I was sure he was going to lock me up."

Max is now head community and cultural services at Wear Valley District Council, responsible - among many other things - for the Auckland Castle 10, among the top five 10k events in Britain, and the Weardale Triathlon.

The former England international is a much more gentle runner these days and faces a cartilage operation on his knee. "It's what happens after years of abuse, 100 miles a week. Basically, I'm wrecked."

Among the region's swimmers were Samantha Purvis and Cathy White. Sam's parents were from Chilton, near Ferryhill, moved to Stockton to be nearer her 5.30am training at the town pool and were therefore somewhat surprised that in Edinburgh she couldn't take the plunge until eight o'clock.

Everyone blamed everyone else, principally the unions.

Cathy White, then 21, was from Barnard Castle, had won a team silver in the 1982 Commonwealth Games and been partly funded by the proud people of Teesdale.

She'd done photographic shoots for Vogue and other magazines, appeared in Edinburgh with three large rings in one ear and a stud in the other - "no special significance, it's just something I hoped would be attractive" - hoped for more modelling work, but definitely not Page Three.

"People see enough of me already," said Cathy.

Her father, who died suddenly, was coach to Darlington Swimming Club. Her mother is still in Startforth, Barnard Castle. Cathy married a Scottish professional footballer and, so far as we can gather, is now in that unexplored area beyond the Tees known generally as the south.

We have been unable to find either her or Sam Purvis. A fall at the final hurdle.

Just days before the 17th Commonwealth Games open in Manchester, Mike Amos looks back at the unlucky 13th in Edinburgh - from which, sustained by a diet of Scotch pies and speculation, a daily Backtrack column appeared.

The 1986 Games were lost before the first fanfare. "The organisers have embarked with the empty conceit of small town businessmen charged with sponsoring a local raffle," wailed a prophetic editorial in The Scotsman.

At the Christchurch games four years previously, there'd been seven on the organising committee. In Edinburgh there were 400. "Their ability and imagination do not match the task," The Scotsman added.

That was before the 50 yard queues for the ladies, the regular shortage of programmes - "I suggest you talk among yourselves" said the fatuous announcer - and the 2,000 main stadium seats without so much as a view of the scoreboard.

It was also before Mr Bob Johnson introduced the word "dreich" to the temperate North-East.

"Dreich", said the little borderline book we'd bought at Waverley Station, meant "bleak, boring or dismal." Three inches of rain fell in as many days, sports shops sold hot water bottles. Climatically, at least, "dreich" summed Edinburgh up perfectly.

For months they'd warned of financial disaster - until "Captain" Bob Maxwell and his gallants from the Mirror Group charged in as principal sponsors. They'd built a 23,000 capacity stadium with two-thirds of the seats uncovered, failed totally to ignite Edinburgh's enthusiasm, to follow the lead of the 1970 Games in the city or even to cover the track at the velodrome.

"Even before the opening ceremony, Auld Reekie had become bored Reekie and soon it was bored rigid," the departing column observed (and was pretty proud of it at the time.)

Even when the Queen and Prince Philip were due to leave after an evening visit to the Commonwealth Pool only 50 people turned up - "it's only that many because Coronation Street's just finished" said a peevish polliss - though the greater benchmark of Edinburgh's apathy may have come when Margaret Thatcher forayed fecklessly into the fray.

Just one person was arrested.

They couldn't be blamed for the weather, of course, though they might reasonably have expected it, nor might they have foreseen that of 82 Princes Street shops approached for sponsorship, only eight came up with the goods..

Things became even worse for Mr Mike Cowling, the column's photographer for the duration, whose beloved motor bike was pinched on day three.

We'd also been aghast to find beer at 96p a pint, to be offered deep fried Scotch pies - a delicacy which proved sadly addictive - and to be charged £3 95 for a Newcastle Brown Ale beer mat.

Though North-East based Paul Curran, Steve Cram and Kirsty Wade all won second golds on the final day, the end of the Chaotic Games came as a haste-ye back relief.

"What is inexplicable is that the great organisation of 1970 should have declined to such ineptitude," said Christopher Brasher.

"Edinburgh '86 will stand as a monument to the pitfalls of modern sport," said the Daily Telegraph.

Only Cap'n Bob Maxwell demurred. "These games have been a great success," he said. Manchester will be even better.

Twenty things those who weren't Backtrack readers might never have known (or, long since, happily forgotten.)

* Press releases from Mirror Group Newspapers described Bob Maxwell, doubtless inadvertently, as "Sir Robert."

* Competitors had no longer to take a sex test, merely to pass "femininity control." (Honest). Though the Games Village was mixed, competitors were expected to be in bed - preferably their own - by midnight.

* The Gold Medal pub, opposite the Village, overflowed with competitors until the early hours. The Australians, it was reported, easily won both the eating and drinking events.

* Among 18,000 accredited participants, officials, workers and media, only organising committee chairman Ken Borthwick was known to lose his pass.

* Morpeth Harrier Jim Alder, marathon gold medal winner in the 1982 Games, was a "technical officer" in Edinburgh. "It means I give out the sponges," he said.

* The England men's swimming team, including 6ft 7in South Tyneside doctor Kevin Boyd, hid a giant inflatable doll behind the press seats shortly before the Queen arrived at the Commonwealth Pool.

* Hawes ropemaker W&R Outhwaite was asked to provide 460 multi-coloured skipping ropes for the opening ceremony - just three weeks before the event.

* Parents unable to buy tickets to watch the 6,500 children in the opening ceremony were allowed to watch the rehearsal instead. Hard up organisers charged them £3 a head.

* Notoriously uncommunicative, Daley Thompson spoke to the Backtrack column when asked - at 8am - for an interview. "No," he replied, exclusively.

* Half an hour before the bowls began, a 25 yard queue of competitors was still waiting to get in.

* A letter in The Scotsman attacked the Scots for their "partisan, vindictive and pusillanimous mutterings" over the Edinburgh appearance of Margaret Thatcher. It was from J W McConahcie in Eaglescliffe.

* During the final of the 10k, televisions in the Press centre were switched automatically to the Test match.

* A chap we met in the pub had been building the Queen's personal loo at the Meadowbank Stadium but declined any further details. "I've signed the act; toilets are official secrets," he said.

* Just two paying customers attended the first day of the badminton at Meadowbank Hall.

* The freezing BBC crews at the cycling velodrome were asked to stop stamping their feet, lest the scaffolding collapse on the cars below.

* Dr Wendy Dodds, a rheumatologist from Tynemouth, was medical officer to the English men's wrestling team. "They forget I'm any different," she said.

* Canadian high jumper Debbie Brill competed without a bra.

* When Gosforth solicitor Ian McCombie won bronze in the 30k walk, his parents and fiancee were so cold they left before the presentation.

* Christopher Staples, 19, from Middleton St George, swam in the Games for Swaziland. (We'd pinched that one from the Darlington and Stockton Times.)

* Unpaid volunteers at the boxing were invited to a party at the end. The organisers charged them £1.36 bus fare.

Published: ??/??/2002