Wheelchairs, Perjury and the London Marathon

by Tim Marshall

  Brasher, though, achieved further honours, and in some respects the biggest prize of all: he won the 3000 metre steeplechase in the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956, confirmed after an initial protest had looked as though he might have been disqualified for interference. Subsequently, he brought the sport of orienteering to Britain, in 1957. He became a sports journalist, working his way up to become a star columnist for The Observer, though newspapers weren’t his only arrow. He was for a time head of the Outside Broadcast unit of the BBC (at least, I think he held that position; the most I could find nowadays was that he was the presenter of the following programme), and in that capacity he is probably best remembered for masterminding the televised broadcast of the ascent of the Old Man of Hoy, a 450 feet high sandstone sea-stack off the island of Hoy in the Orkneys, in the summer of 1967, which pulled in the cream of British rock-climbing to an extravaganza spread out over two days.

  Back in the 1950s the Pen y Gwryd hotel in North Wales had become the spiritual home of the Everest team in the months leading up to their departure for Nepal. There are still signatures of some members of the expedition on the ceiling in the bar, and it is regarded very much as a climbers’ pub. It is situated at a junction on the road between Capel Curig and Beddgelert. Almost all the buildings here are connected with the pub, but on the other side of the road there used to be a garage. There are still bits of an unsightly concrete infrastructure on view, though how long it is since it functioned as a garage is anyone’s guess – it’s over 50 years since I first visited the area, and it was closed then. But the land must have belonged to someone, because in the 1970s (1980s?) it was widely rumoured in the climbing world that Brasher had bought the land and gifted it to the National Trust, to help prevent its being used for any other purpose. Everyone I’ve ever talked to about this, including some who have lived in the area for decades, has heard the same rumour, but no one knows if it’s true.

  John Disley was born in the same year as Chris Brasher, 1928. He won the bronze medal in the steeplechase at the Helsinki Olympics of 1952, and in 1955 had the world’s fastest time, though he was injured at the time the team was selected for the Melbourne Olympics the following year. Like Brasher, however, he was interested in climbing and mountaineering, and when in 1955 the Central Council for Physical Recreation (CCPR) bought the old Royal Hotel at Capel Curig in North Wales to use as a centre for outdoor activities, Disley was appointed as Chief Instructor; there is still a photograph of him in this capacity up in the Centre. And while there, he wrote an instructional book, “Tackle Climbing This Way”. A more retiring person than Brasher, he nonetheless had a public face through being appointed as a vice-chairman of the Great Britain Sports Council, a position he held from 1974 to 1982. Together, Brasher and Disley were to have a powerful influence over the way that mass fun-running was to develop in Britain during the 1980s.

  The People’s Marathon

  The canoe trip described earlier, in the summer of 1980, was getting ahead of things. In November 1979, in his capacity as a star columnist for The Observer newspaper, Chris Brasher wrote the following:

  “Last Sunday, in one of the most violent, trouble-stricken cities in the world, 11,532 men, women and children from 40 countries of the world, assisted by 2.5 million black, white and yellow people, Protestants and Catholics, Jews and Muslims, Buddhists and Confucians, laughed, cheered and suffered during the greatest public festival the world has ever seen.”

  He was, of course, writing about the New York marathon, and he clearly saw the prospect of something like this event being transplanted to London, engaging not just the runners but also the tens of thousands of residents living alongside wherever the route might eventually go. On the face of it this looked as though it would be an innovation, but even before it became reality he had been gazumped.

  At the time, if you wanted to take part in an athletics event authorised by the AAA you were supposed to be affiliated to them. Normally this would be by being a member of an athletics club – Birchfield Harriers, or Coventry Godiva Harriers, and so on. Recognising that not everyone wanted to join a club, the AAA had a rule stipulating that an unattached runner could run in AAA-accredited events, but only for a year. Any longer than that, and you had to join an affiliated organisation. However, they came to realise that this rule was unenforceable, and so proposed instead that there be a levy of 50p on all unattached runners for all events. (The 50p suggestion was a minimum; when, subsequently, London got going, they decided to institute a £1 charge.) But, as “Running” magazine pointed out, this system was open to abuse, and was in effect also unenforceable, as long as there wasn’t a central register of club members – which there wasn’t.

  These considerations began to cause difficulties as soon as there were events organised for Joe (and Josephine) Public to take part in. Quite how he came to realise that there was a latent demand for such an event I don’t know, but a man in the West Midlands, John Walker, decided in the late 1970s to organise a marathon which anyone could take part in, club member or not. This was before Brasher’s article in “The Observer”. It’s quite difficult now finding out anything about what was called the People’s Marathon, despite the fact that there were at least four such events with several thousand entrants each time. But as well as going to the USA to consult with the organisers of the New York and Boston marathons, Brasher and Disley came to Birmingham to talk to John Walker about staging an event such as they hoped to put on in the rather different environment of Britain.

  I have the race programme for the third People’s Marathon, in 1982, in front of me. It was sponsored mainly by Nike and the Birmingham Evening Mail, but there is no mention of the AAA anywhere in the document. This suggests to me that the two earlier races had no formal recognition or accreditation by the AAA, but that the same two sponsors had supported the two earlier events. Living in Birmingham I remember being vaguely aware of some publicity about a marathon which was to take place in the spring of 1980. This was to be independent of the AAA – that is, you didn’t have to be a member of a club to take part. Probably, at the time, I thought wistfully about how good it would be to take part, but my shoulder was still in a dodgy state, and the later canoe holiday did nothing to show that the shoulder was in a fit state for serious pushing: the canoeing movement, pulling backwards on a paddle, is precisely opposite to that of propelling a wheelchair, where you push forwards. So, with respect to the first People’s Marathon, I did absolutely nothing. Nor, to my shame, did I take any notice as it was reported locally, either in advance or afterwards in the results.

  Things were about to change, however, because on a visit to my GP I must have grumbled about the state of my shoulder “two years after the initial injury …” and so on (any athlete who has had a chronic injury will relate to the experience). She said that the practice had just taken on a new physiotherapist, she was very good, and she was sure that if anyone could do something, Jill would be able to. Sceptical after two years of going nowhere, but happy to clutch at a straw (or so it seemed), I agreed to give it a go. The GP was right: Jill was good. She put in weeks of heavy electrical work on the shoulder, as well as some deep frictions, which broke down the adhesions which had been troubling me for so long, and made it possible to go long-distance pushing again. The prospects for 1981 looked good.

  The First Skirmish

  The record of my early contacts with Brasher is incomplete. His 1979 article about the New York Marathon can still be found on the web, and it is an important landmark in charting the development of mass fun-running in this country. I don’t seem to have replied to this, but 11 months later, in October 1980, I sent a letter to the Sports Editor, which reads as though it was a response to that article, to which Brasher himself replied the following month – see below for this correspondence. Why I should have replied to an article which had appeared 11 months earlier, without a further stimulus, is baffling; but there must have been something which provoked it, including (probably) some rema
rk by Brasher about establishing a marathon in London the following year. (Even now, I think that is an incredibly short time to set up an event as complicated as a mass marathon.) Whatever the real situation regarding our correspondence, the main story began with my letter below:

  “28th October 1980

  The Sports Editor

  The Observer

  8 St Andrews Hill

  London EC4

  Dear Sir

  Chris Brasher writes with eloquence and passion about the New York marathon, and why there needs to be a similar event held in London. The Observer, the GLC and Gillette are to be congratulated on their imagination, and one hopes the effort of organisation will be seen as worthwhile by all three. But there is one aspect of the affair of which even Chris Brasher may be unaware, and to which I should like to draw his and the organisers’ attention.

  He observed with amusement last year the waiter with the tray and the bottle of Perrier, and with great respect, the blind man who completed the course. He did not see, for they are now formally banned from entering the New York marathon, anyone pushing him (or her) self in a wheelchair. Had he visited, or run in, the Boston Marathon, or the Orange Bowl marathon, or any one of dozens of lesser-known events which occur the length and breadth of the USA, this sight would not have been denied him.

  The conventional way in which wheelchair sports are reported in this country is not conducive to their being regarded very highly as sporting activities. It is the “human interest” approach which for some reason appeals to press and broadcasters alike, and which serves only to perpetuate the outdated image of people in wheelchairs as dependent, incapable, requiring sympathy, and so on. Most of the sports participated in by wheelchair athletes do not, I believe, have much spectator appeal, in that they seem mostly to show people in wheelchairs doing what people with legs that work also do, only not so well – ideal for the sympathy-evoking human interest story, but no use for anything else.

  Wheelchair racing is sufficiently different from its able-bodied counterpart – running – to exist as a spectator sport in its own right, and the sight – which Chris Brasher has obviously not seen – of 20 people in wheelchairs lined up in front of the runners at the start of a major marathon is now commonplace in the USA. Although wheelchair participation in marathons is only just over five years old, times have been slashed to such an extent that the record is now one hour 55 minutes (some 13½ minutes faster than the fastest-ever runner, for what it is worth) set on the Boston course earlier this year. This is attributable to a mixture of improved wheelchair design and (particularly) to the fact that maintaining momentum in a wheelchair is quite different from (and easier than) doing so when running, even though it is the arms that do the propelling, not the legs.

  Concern is sometimes expressed that wheelchair athletes are competing against runners. This is nonsense (that is, to be concerned about it is nonsensical): they take part with them, and there can be no better example of the fulfilment of the “Sport for All” slogan than this. Will the organisers and sponsors of the London marathon have the imagination to establish a wheelchair section for their new venture? I for one hope so, and I am sure they would find a response.

  Yours sincerely

  Tim Marshall (a wheelie)

  PS It also needs a careful course design. Can I offer my services?”

  (A brief comment: the organiser of the New York marathon, Fred le Bow, was already well known amongst wheelies in the USA for his opposition to wheelchair participation in “his” race. This antipathy reached such a pitch that in later years he was sued by wheelchair users for depriving them of their civil rights, through his use of public facilities – roads, pavements etc. – where the course was designed to exclude wheelchairs; there were kerbs and, I believe, on one occasion, a short flight of steps. I never heard the outcome of the case.)

  “THE OBSERVER

  1st November 1980

  Dear Mr Marshall

  Many thanks for your letter of October 26th – it has gone to the Letters Editor, but if he doesn’t have space I will use extracts in my article this week.

  I took special notice last Sunday of the Wheelies who finished (unofficially) in the New York Marathon and it would certainly be the management committee’s wish that they could take part in the London Marathon, but we have got an awful lot of prejudice to overcome. To begin with it hasn’t been easy to overcome the Police’s reluctance and I am sure that in the first year we have got to accept some restrictions – notably those imposed by the athletic authorities who often have a very Victorian attitude.

  When we have finished our detailed work on the route, perhaps I can write to you again and ask you to go over it in your chair and see what you think.

  Yours sincerely,

  CHRIS BRASHER”

  This sounded very encouraging, and I looked forward eagerly to his next letter – which never came.

  1981: The Lakes Project

  The United Nations designated 1981 as the International Year of Disabled People. What to do? One answer: it looked as though the first London Marathon might include a wheelchair section, surely a fitting statement-cum-demonstration of the abilities of some kinds of disabled people. But what else – was there anything that I could do, not in terms of fundraising – I’d always been hopeless at that – but something that would mark the year as something special for me?

  The answer came when friends in the climbing club invited me to spend New Year with them at the hut of one of their other climbing clubs in Patterdale. The switch was thrown on realising that, thanks to Jill, not only would I be able to do the Derwentwater circuit in April, but that there were other large lakes in the Lake District that you could push round on roads: specifically, Thirlmere, Coniston, Bassenthwaite, and the grand-daddy of them all, Windermere. Ullswater wasn’t on, because there was no road between Howtown, on the eastern shore of the lake, and Glenridding, at the very south-western corner. So Ullswater was parked for the time being.

  Sarah, daughter of the aforementioned friends, volunteered to come round Thirlmere with me. We set off on New Year’s morning from the north-east corner going south along the east side of the lake on the A591, rationalising to ourselves that there would be less traffic that day than on any other. That may indeed have been the case, but there was still too much for comfort, and it was with some relief that we reached the end of the lake and were able to turn onto the service road built along the west side. The first stretch hadn’t been very hilly, just a bit of up and down near the start, but the back road was a joy, flat as a pancake and no traffic at all. Sadly, I didn’t record how long we took.

  Another climbing club weekend came in early February, and this time Joan volunteered to come round Coniston with me, not walking all the way as Sarah had done but driving round and stopping at a convenient spot every two or three miles for refuelling (me). Again, I went clockwise, starting and finishing in the village. The main feature of the circuit was the steep climb shortly after the start, in effect a climb up to Brantwood, John Ruskin’s house, and now a place to be visited – but not on this occasion. It was so steep that at one stage I wondered whether I would be able to make it without assistance, which, had it been necessary, would have left me distraught with a collapsed project, but fortunately I made it OK. (I should add that so far all these circuits were made using my ordinary, everyday, wheelchair.)

  Bassenthwaite was scheduled for early March, but other things happened first. Mitch, the retired headmaster, rang me up. John Walker, of the People’s Marathon, had been in touch. The governors of the race wanted to mark the UN Year of Disabled People by designating BSAD as one of the race charities; and did he think it might be possible to stage, say, a demonstration race by wheelchairs of, say, 5, or perhaps even 10, kilometres as a kind of curtain-raiser to the marathon? And so I came to speak with John Walker. He was slightly surprised when I suggested a full marathon – I thought I could get half a dozen local people to take part – but was quite ha
ppy when I reassured him that it wouldn’t be a cowboy affair, but a serious athletic event. I cited recent American times to him – 2h 9m 1s in the Orange Bowl marathon at Miami, and 1h 55m at Boston, both from1980. Like most people at this time he hadn’t realised how far the Americans (and Canadians) had taken the event; and whilst I said that we couldn’t approach these times, we’d put on a reasonable show. All I had to do now was to find the participants. Mark agreed to try again, as did a couple of others whom I’d met through basketball, and a couple more joined in through the grapevine, one of whom was being pushed.

  Bassenthwaite came first, however. A weekend based at the university’s outdoor centre by the side of Coniston was the setting, and this time Dee, one of my post-graduate students, who was at the weekend with her husband, agreed to do the necessary stewarding. This was on the same basis as the Coniston affair: drive 3 miles or so to a refuelling stop, wait till I appeared, refuel, and on we go. Bassenthwaite was the least enjoyable of all the lakes: the A591 north of Keswick, which went along the east side of the lake, was narrow and twisty, often with high banks alongside the road preventing my seeing what was round the next corner – or, more to the point, preventing me being seen from behind. And when that stretch was over and we crossed to the west side to come back, I was on the A66, the main east–west road through the heart of the north Lakes to the west coast. The only saving grace was that this section of the route was built on top of the old Penrith–Keswick–Cockermouth railway line, and so was as flat as a pancake. As with the other two lakes I failed to record the time, but it was something under four hours. And I noticed that Bassenthwaite was the only lake done anti-clockwise – the first two had been clockwise, and the two to come would be also.