ALMOST 100 years after his remarkable athletics career became the subject of a real life Boys' Own story, the tale of Willie Applegarth is to have a happy ending. The column claims some small part.

Willie was the Guisborough lad who anchored Britain's triumphant 4x100 relay team in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, who broke three world records and won two other Olympic medals, whose 9.8 for the 100 yards remained a British record for more than 40 years.

Great Britain didn't again win the 4x100 until 2004, when finally we caught up. He was the fastest man on earth, said Boys' Own in 1914, but back home he was just as quickly forgotten.

Now, just six years before the Olympics return to Britain, he is at last to be recognised on home soil.

We wrote of him in 2000, following extensive research by Stewart Clarke, a proud Gisborian. "His name is almost unrecognised, " said Stewart at the time. "Even distant relatives just know he was a runner."

After an appeal for information from Aidan Applegarth, his Essex based great nephew, Willie again featured hereabouts in November 2004. "There's a street in Hammersmith named after him, but nothing at all in Guisborough, " said Aidan.

Still nothing happened. If not the baton, east Cleveland appeared to be passing the buck.

This April, however, a plaque in Willie's memory will at last be unveiled when a £750,000 athletics facility is opened at the Laurence Jackson school in Guisborough. A 4x100m race - an action relay, as it were - will also take place. Brendan Foster - 58 yesterday - is expected to attend.

The plaque will be unveiled by 87-year-old Katie Towers, Willie's mother's niece, who still lives in Guisborough. "He was born before his time, " says Mrs Towers.

"If he were alive today, with all the scientific training, special tracks and fancy running shoes, goodness knows how fast he could have gone."

They didn't go much on the appliance of science in those days, though Willie swore by buttons down his running shorts in order to support the waist muscles.

He was also a lifelong teetotaller and non-smoker, bathed every morning in cold water, believed in army-style training and in running with dumb bells.

Any other tips for Boys' Own readers before the Great War? "Don't be a silly billy and don't take piffling little steps, " he said.

The idea for the plaque came from Stuart Burns, another Guisborough resident, after he read in Backtrack about the town's forgotten hero.

"He was the David Beckham of his day but has been totally forgotten, " says Stuart, a 58year-old retired steel worker. "If they made Kelly Holmes a Dame, what would they have made Willie Applegarth?"

William Reuben Applegarth was born in Union Street, Guisborough in May 1890, one of eight children.

His father was a journeyman grocer from Stockton, his mother (like Katie Towers) a member of the locally well known Bulmer family.

The family moved to London in 1906. Eight years later, a member of Polytechnic Harriers and known to his satisfaction as the Yorkshire Tyke, he was named by Boys' Own as Britain's most famous athlete.

Katie Towers, still sufficiently possessed of the Applegarth athleticism regularly to go swimming - "I only do ten lengths, it takes me nearly half an hour" - believes that the move to London meant that he was out of sight and mind.

"In those days, London seemed as far away as the moon. You were lucky to go to Redcar, never mind London."

Aidan, a successful banker and himself a former Southern Counties 100m and 200m champion, believes that something must have happened to make his great uncle unpopular.

"It seems as if he was almost discarded.

"Even Harold Abrahams extolled him, said how much he owed to him.

"I was a little bit dismayed when I thought he'd been completely forgotten, so I'm delighted that something is at last being done."

Stewart Clarke, long serving secretary of the North Yorkshire and South Durham Cricket League, is equally pleased.

"I spent three or four years researching this, talking to people in America and all over Britain. It's wonderful that Guisborough is finally remembering him."

The Guisborough Flyer did sometimes land back home, training and racing on Peacock's Field - where a Safeway supermarket now stands - and twice equalling his 9.8 record.

In 1916 he turned professional, attracting huge crowds, before emigrating to America, coaching university soccer and working for GEC.

He died in 1958, the year that his 100 yard record was finally broken.

Stuart Burns - "a rugby man, I only ever used to run into people" - has won backing from the town council and from the British Olympic Association, which has allowed use of its "Team Great Britain" logo on the plaque.

"I'm very proud to be from Guisborough and when I saw it in Backtrack I wanted to do something.

"I hope that it will serve as a reminder of someone who youngsters can really look up to.

"It's been an awfully long time coming."

SSTEWART Clarke, who'd listened "awestruck" as a child when the old lads remembered Willie Applegarth, recalls another 100m record holder whose star may be rising.

Sir Menzies Campbell, now in the running for the Liberal Democrat leadership, represented Great Britain in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo and was England's athletics captain in the 1966 Commonwealth Games.

Jeffrey Archer was another team member, still calls Campbell "skipper". Ming isn't much amused.

He clocked 10.2 for the 100m in San Jose in 1967, the British record standing for seven years. Willie Applegarth had managed 10.6 more than 50 years earlier.

All the news that's fit to sprint, we may not now have heard the last of him.

And finally...

THE only Premiership player to have hit a hat-trick in all four divisions, in the FA and League cups and for his country (Backtrack, January 10) is Robert Earnshaw of West Bromwich Albion. Hails of Hartlepool, bless him, was first of several to point out that Earnshaw's first ever league goal was for Cardiff City at the Vic - "a lovely overhead kick" - but confesses the memory man assistance of Uncle Albert Kelleher. Jamie Corrigan in Elwick was the only one to recall that Earnshaw was also on Middlesbrough's books, but never got a game. Bob Foster in Ferryhill today invites readers to name the only two footballers to have played in North-East, London, Merseyside and Milan derbies. Suitably cosmopolitan, the column returns on Tuesday.

Published: 13/01/2006