Wheelchairs, Perjury and the London Marathon

by Tim Marshall

  There are many comments to make about this. Firstly, the speed of transmission of the letter from Illtyd Harrington to the race HQ: about 6 weeks!! Secondly, the argument about the timing of the race in relation to the Changing of the Guard: this was absolutely not relevant to wheelchairs at the time. No one in this country had yet broken 3 hours, and a 10-minute headstart would be likely to result in the leading runners overtaking the leading wheelchairs well before reaching the Tower on the way back out of Docklands. Thus the runners would still have been the first to reach The Mall, and the sanctity of the Changing of the Guard preserved. It was to be several years before the wheelchair times in London became such that, say, a 10-minute front-end start needed an extra dispensation – but by then, other matters had moved the whole argument on. Regarding the closure of a motorway exit I couldn’t really comment, since I didn’t know which exit was being referred to, but it seemed unlikely that a 10-minute headstart would have been critical. I never had the opportunity to put the case face to face.

  Thirdly, the suggestion about starting at the back: bad, bad idea, for obvious reasons (and wouldn’t they have to keep the motorway junction closed for longer than if opening it earlier for a headstart?) In any case, Brasher and Disley could hardly complain that there wasn’t time to incorporate a wheelchair section, since the first approach to them had been over three years ago and one way or another I had been sniping at them ever since (and, as it turned out, so had others, though not for quite so long). On the other hand, the letter seemed to show a greater openness to the idea of a wheelchair race, opening the possibility of a 1984 event rather than Disley’s “in a few years time …”, and without any suggestion that it might “… erode the quality of the race.” But now, to judge from the enquiries to Jenny’s office, and the letters and phone calls I was getting, a head of steam was building up that would be extremely difficult to defuse by telling everyone that a London wheelchair event would be held next year, not this (“jam tomorrow, but not today”). I don’t think anyone took the Windermere suggestion seriously.

  So the Docklands event took place, not exactly a half marathon, but 12.56 miles. Julia Allton sent me the results, which I have managed to lose, but one bit of paperwork which does exist still revealed that the winner had taken “just over an hour”. If this were true, it was an astonishing time, suggesting that a full marathon might have been done in less than 2½ hours, over 30 minutes faster than any time yet achieved in Britain, and threatening our argument for a front-end start which would not blow open the carefully arranged compromise with the Palace. The full results would have clarified all that, but although it looks menacing through the retrospectroscope, I don’t remember feeling alarmed at the time, so the “just over an hour” report is probably putting a generous gloss on things.

  Then I heard from a contact in County Hall that there was a certain amount of opposition to the idea of a wheelchair section altogether. The nature of this information, who had leaked/released it, I didn’t know: none of the existing paperwork says anything about this, but there is enough to indicate that the concern was on grounds of safety. I wrote immediately to Illtyd Harrington, enclosing quotes from various US athletes following the banning of wheelchairs from the New York marathon in 1979. The material covered both the principle and practice of wheelchair participation. I acknowledged that most of the names would be unknown to a British audience, except for Bill Rogers, who was then one of the greatest marathon runners of all time. And I finished with the following: “Why is it safe to have 61 wheelchairs amongst 20,000 runners in the Great North Run (the numbers in 1982), but dangerous to have 20 wheelchairs amongst 18,000 runners in the London Marathon?”

  There was more correspondence from Jenny to both Brasher and Disley, urging them to consider establishing a wheelchair race in 1984 – and to announce it – though I have no reply to either. Then in the middle of January, Mike O’Flynn wrote again to Illtyd Harrington:

  “Dear Mr Harrington

  I would be very interested to know whether you have received a reply from the organisers of the Gillette London Marathon because we are now getting rather impatient enquiries from our prospective wheelchair entrants.

  If any problems have occurred I am sure they can be overcome with goodwill.

  I would be happy to attend a meeting with you and the organisers so that hopefully we can sort out any objections which may have been raised…”

  At around the same time I was sent a cutting from the London evening paper, the “Evening Standard”, which reported that I had proposed to Chris Brasher that 20 wheelchair athletes should be included in the 1983 race, at that point exactly 3 months away. The cutting was undated, and I don’t know who sent it. I wrote immediately to the Standard, setting out the situation as I then knew it, denying that I (or anyone else, as far as I knew) was in negotiations with Brasher and Disley, and acknowledging that though discussions were going on, I wasn’t at liberty to say who was involved.

  I ended up with the same final paragraph I had sent to Illtyd Harrington not long before, contrasting the enlightened views of those in the north-east with those in London. I neither sought nor expected a reply, and wasn’t disappointed.

  What appeared to be the final blow came in a letter from Illtyd Harrington to Mike O’Flynn dated February 2nd:

  “Dear Mr O’Flynn

  We have now been able to take advice following the discussions we had previously and I am afraid that the answer is that the organisers cannot let wheelchair entrants into the London Marathon.

  There are two reasons for this:

  The event is run under IAAF rules and competitors using wheels are debarred

  Experience in other mass marathons has shown that wheelchair entrants are dangerous to other competitors.

  Tony, Peter and myself are far from happy and if there is any way you feel that we can get round this, please let me know.

  Yours sincerely …”

  Mike replied two days later:

  “Dear Mr Harrington,

  I was obviously extremely disappointed to receive your letter dated February 2nd 1983 and I have consulted with our President, Mrs Mary Glen Haig, CBE who was chairman of the CCPR for five years and is still an Executive Member. I hope she will be able to help but will keep you informed.

  With best wishes

  Yours sincerely …”

  A week later I wrote to Illtyd Harrington, addressing him by his first name, which can only be because either he had sent me a letter (which I didn’t keep) in which he had called me Tim, or because he had rung me at work and we’d had a conversation on first-name terms, or because at the last meeting he suggested using first names; the last seems the most likely explanation.

  “Dear Illtyd,

  Mike O’Flynn sent me a copy of your letter of last week – depressing news, though I think I’d half expected it. I did warn you (or rather , Tony Banks) in the original proposal that there was “bitter opposition” from “the organisers”. I guess you found it.

  I’m writing this in a personal capacity, without my BSAD official hat on, but there is nevertheless something you can do, and this is to send me a list of “The Governors” of the race and of “The Organisers” if they are different. [Probably wisely, and certainly correctly, he never did.]

  With respect to the specific excuses (you may have occasion to discuss these somewhere or other):

  IAAF rules. I have a letter from the IAAF secretariat in which it is stated that the presence of wheelchair athletes in/among an IAAF-authorised event in no way de-officialises the times recorded by runners.

  The “rule” is only a problem if wheelchair athletes are perceived as taking part in the same event as runners (this is why, you will recall, the proposal was put for the wheelchair event to be held “in conjunction with” the London Marathon). If, on the other hand, they are perceived as taking part in their own event which happens to be going on at the same time …

  Another IAAF rule is that men and w
omen may not take part in the same event. Anyone of sound mind can see that the wheelchair athletes are very much competing on wheels against the runners, quite contrary to the regulations, whereas it is plain for all to see that the fact that men and women runners start in the same place, at the same time, run along the same course, and finish in the same place, in no way means they are taking part in the same race. Truly, the emperor’s new clothes are indeed wonderful! [This, I think, was the first time I thought of this particular perspective on the then current practice; it was to be useful two weeks later when I let fly with another salvo.]

  Safety. There was, I believe, an incident in the New York marathon 6 or 7 years ago, and of course Brasher has used that race as a model for London. However, I know of no incident since in the USA, and none at all in Britain. With the example of the Great North Run (20,000 runners, 61 wheelchairs), one must suppose that “the organisers” of London imagine that the runners, or the wheelchair athletes, or (just possibly) “the organisers” themselves are less competent than those up north.

  One more point. It is of course dangerous to have 16,000 runners jostling along a road all bunched together – perhaps you might suggest to “the organisers” that the whole event is dangerous and should be scrapped! Seriously though, it may appear to be dangerous, but if organised properly as we proposed, it is not. I would again demand that Brasher produce his evidence.

  I gather Mike O’Flynn is beavering away behind the scenes hoping to put more pressure on, but I don’t give much for his chances. When that comes to a full stop, we shall have to consider again how to proceed; the only thing that won’t happen is that the whole issue will be dropped.

  Thanks again for your interest and support.

  Yours sincerely …”

  It really did seem like the end of the road. I couldn’t think of any different, let alone higher, authority to whom we could appeal. The last letter, to Illtyd, was written in part in desperation, and I just hoped he didn’t construe it as a menacing threat to the whole event. Had I waited another week, I probably wouldn’t have included the last two paragraphs, but it had gone, and that was that.

  The Third Battle of Marathon

  The situation looked pretty desperate. Marathons were being done all over the country with wheelchair participants, and there was the supreme example of the Great North Run, but from London, a flat refusal. The Greater London Council seemed powerless to intervene, having been caught on the “it’s against international regulations” hook. And there was a threat – for I saw it as such – of a “special” race just for wheelchairs being staged in Hyde Park organised by Motability who, although not known for their interest in sport, were certainly a big player in a wider aspect of disability issues. But this wasn’t offering the kind of integrated model that I was interested in, and which was happening everywhere else, or so it seemed. Could the BSAD hierarchy outface Motability? Would it want to, or would it sling its hook and offer to join in with them? Troubled times indeed.

  Things began to change when three matters came together to provide a key which finally began to unlock things. A friend, knowing I was interested in wheelchair road-racing, showed me a page from “Running” magazine. Amidst lots of advertisements for road races here, there and everywhere, there was one which stood out as being slightly different. “Man against Horse,” it proclaimed, “under AAA laws”. Man against horse??!! Under AAA laws???

  It turned out that this event, which had been going for some years already (and, as I write this 33 years later, still is), at Llanwrtyd Wells in the Welsh borders, indeed had men running against horses. The course was about 22 miles across country (there may have been some road involvement as well), and after the men had started they were followed some 20 minutes later by horses (each with a rider, of course) whose aim was to catch and overtake the runners before the finish line was reached. (I believe that, up to and including the 1982 event, the horses had always “won” – that is, crossed the finishing line first). But how could this be said to be taking place “under AAA laws”? – unless runners and horses were actually taking part in separate events run in parallel? Men and horses … Hmmm.

  It has been a rule of the IAAF that men and women do not compete against each other in athletics. Both sexes may take part in a single meeting, but whether running, jumping or throwing, the two sexes do not compete directly. (As an aside, you might like to consider in which sports there is direct competition. The only two I have found are gliding and equestrianism – show jumping and eventing – in which you might have thought that the strength needed to control half a ton of horse would put women at a considerable disadvantage; but apparently not.) Whilst it is easy to see the sexual segregation in track and field athletics, it isn’t so obvious on the road. Major events like the Great North Run and the London Marathon often have different starting times for elite men and women, and sometimes different starting places, but the mass of runners seem to start at the same time and place irrespective of sex.

  It is different, however, at the finish. For the early finishers, in major televised races you often see long tapes held by race officials stretching out for twenty yards or more from a finishing chute to channel the runners into specific finishing funnels. The tapes are swung to and fro according to the sex of the runner, so that men and women – the elite runners, at least – are seen to finish in different funnels and the fiction that men and women are taking part in different races may be maintained. Men and women … OK.

  (And now, in 2017, there are reportedly discussions taking place within the IAAF (and FINA, the international governing body for swimming) about the possibility of having mixed- sex relay races.

  Much like the Olympics and the IOC, amateurism was a totem pole before which the IAAF genuflected – and made all its member organisations conform, too. It was even in its title – the International Amateur Athletics Federation. (It is worth noting that, since the advent of, in effect, fully professionalised athletics, the organisation has kept the initials but changed the words: it is now the International Association of Athletics Federations. The change was effected in 1992, and two years later the IAAF moved its headquarters from Richmond, in south-west London, to Monaco; well, who wouldn’t? But its location in Richmond made it easy to get to for any British investigative journalist interested in the politics of the sport of athletics). This meant that no professional athlete could take part in any event run under the aegis of the IAAF, or its member organisations. If they did, all the amateur athletes taking part would have had their amateur status compromised, and they would be disqualified from taking part in any IAAF-accredited events in future – including the most prestigious of them all, the Olympic Games.

  One of the remarkable features of this ruling was that it did not apply only to amateur athletes taking part with professional athletes. Amateur athletes could not take part in any sports event in which professional sportsmen or women from any sport were also taking part. So, if a professional footballer, or boxer, or … (you name the sport) were to take part in a fun-run, perhaps raising money for a favourite charity, all the other runners would be automatically disqualified from any and all IAAF-authorised events in future – including, of course, all the top amateur runners who might have been invited to the event in the first place. It is fair to say that by this time the IAAF had taken a somewhat relaxed view over the co-participation in road-racing of professional sports men and women from other sports. Not so the AAA.

  Back in December 1982 “Running” magazine had a savage editorial on the consequences of the rigorous application of the amateurism rule, which it is worth quoting at length:

  “The source of the problem is a minority of runners … [they] are the professionals from other sports who enhance the publicity and prestige of races like the London, who give their fellow runners an extra thrill when they line up alongside them and who often raise large amounts of money for charity.

  The problem is that the AAA says professionals are taboo. No
matter that the AAA has chosen to turn a blind eye to its own rules for the last two Londons; … no matter that only weeks ago the sport finally declared itself semi-pro at the top level [this referred to the IAAF allowing the creation of Trust Funds for athletes to put winnings into, to be drawn on for expenses incurred in racing, and to be fully accessed after retirement] … in some mysterious way everyone who lined up alongside Kevin Keegan in the 1981 Great North Run, or with Alan Minter in the 1982 London, was defiled by their presence. Were you aware that it’s a sin to speak to Jimmy Savile? After all, he once competed in pro cycle races and that makes him illegal too. Will the AAA refuse to let him run next year?

  … [Mike] Farrell, General Secretary of the AAA, says that Hugh Jones could theoretically be banned from the World Championships if he won London and John Conteh, say, was in the same race. This assumes that other countries have armies of officials all as dedicated to nitpicking as some of Britain’s appear to be. It also ignores the fact that Hugh Jones and hundreds of other top runners should have been banned long ago for similar offences in the past. (Jones won the last London wearing a vest advertising a shoe company – also against the rules).