by Tim Marshall
“1. WHEELCHAIRS
a) Must be mechanically safe and sound
b) Should be clear of any protrusions – particularly at the side which could endanger runners
c) The wheelchair shall have two wheels for propulsion and at least one for steering
d) The maximum diameter of the inflated drive wheels shall be 70 cms
e) The philosophy that the wheels are driven directly by the hands without the aid or use of gears, chain levers or other mechanical devices will be maintained. [NB this looked backwards to a few years earlier when someone had turned up at Boston with a mechanically-driven, fully geared, machine, rather like a Meccano-built version of the Cyclops hand-bike I had seen in Denver in 1978; he wasn’t allowed to start, but this kind of equipment eventually gave rise to the sport of Handcycling.] The drive wheels shall have one hand-rim of any diameter solidly attached to each using any method not constituting a hazard to any other competitor. Hand rims may have coatings to facilitate good grip. When foot supports are used provision must be made to prevent the feet from sliding from the foot supports.
2. Klaxons will not be carried or used.
3. A wheelchair competitor may not demand right of way.
4. Directions given by race officials and marshals must be obeyed.”
What would be fascinating to know would be the comments Brasher and Disley had received about the wheelchair section in that first race. It is inconceivable that they had no comments from race organisers elsewhere in Britain, or indeed further afield, but, unsurprisingly, we were not privy to any of them.
1984 And Beyond
The group brought together by Jenny in the last few weeks couldn’t continue in such an ad hoc fashion; something more formal was needed. Jenny herself was leaving, going to teach PE and Games in a girls’ finishing school in Switzerland. From nowhere, it seemed – that is to say, I can’t remember how it came about – Alan Crouse popped up. He had first appeared some time after Philip Lewis’ phone call to me on March 29th. One meeting was held in his house between the press conference at the Waldorf and race day itself, and two or three meetings were held at his home shortly after the race. With Jenny’s imminent departure we needed someone to chair the group who had the necessary time and skills to guide the development of the wheelchair section over the next few years. None of the racers felt able to take on this role, BSAD couldn’t offer anyone, so Alan it was. As head of the British arm of a major office supplies and equipment company, he presumably had greater flexibility over the availability of his time. For the next few years meetings were held in Islington Town Hall at 7.30 in the evenings – not the easiest of times for someone who had to get back to Birmingham the same evening.
There had been such a stir in the three weeks leading up to the race that there was bound to be interest in the future. Unexpectedly, one of the early enquiries came from abroad. I was rung up by Carol Hayes of the Irish Wheelchair Association asking if we were willing to open up the race to her athletes, how did it work and what were the conditions? That was easy to deal with: the committee agreed immediately to the internationalisation of the event in this way, and so the Irish turned up in 1984 with three athletes: Kevin Breen, Jerry O’Rourke and Kay McShane.
In discussions with Brasher and Disley there was at this stage apparently no problem with a front-end start becoming mixed up with the Changing of the Guard on The Mall. They must have recognised that the current times posed no immediate threat to that hallowed event; the timing issue was to arise later. But after all the hoo-ha about the race, I was asked to give a talk to the annual meeting of the Spinal Injuries Association in September. Afterwards, I was approached by Rosalie Wilkins (later to become Baroness Rosalie Wilkins), who was the chief presenter of Central TV’s “Link” programme “of particular interest to disabled viewers and their families”. It had been, she thought, quite a strong story with me, it seemed, at the centre. They (Link) were thinking of making some half-hour programmes about individuals living within the Central coverage region, and would I consider being one of these? So I came to have a half-hour TV programme all about me, and the issues which the struggle for the marathon had evoked. Their idea was that the programme would culminate with the 1984 race, at which I confidently expected to break 3 hours. Filming went on during early 1984, including film of me teaching my post-graduate students as well as sailing (in a Wayfarer, not in the trimaran) and some shots taken the day before the race in my new racing wheelchair in the Docklands.
As part of the filming I went to the pre-race Pasta Party at the Royal Lancaster Hotel. Madge Sharples, the elderly Scottish runner, was there, as was Ron Pickering, interviewing whoever might be found – amongst them, William Charlton. He had begun to be seen at a number of races around the country, usually rattling a collection box labelled BSAD, though no one in the organisation knew anything about him. Ron Pickering later reported that he’d met “a smashing man who had done as many as 512 marathons, and the Pennine Way, all in his wheelchair!” I wrote to Ron afterwards pointing out the absurdity of what he’d been told, but never had a reply.
And so to the race. William Charlton was there (of course!), but he wasn’t allowed to start. Later that year he was picked up by the police at the finish of the Robin Hood (Half-?) Marathon with a very full collection box. It transpired that he’d appeared at many races during the year, always under the same guise, with neither BSAD, nor any other charity as far as could be ascertained, receiving any money from his activities. What happened to him, I don’t know.
For me, the race was a disaster, the more so because I’d given the TV people estimates of my times at particular points on the course, based on a finishing time of 2 hours 50 minutes. Right at the start, pushing along Charlton Way, it became obvious that I hadn’t set the wheelchair up correctly: I hadn’t strapped my knees together to give a “platform” to rest my trunk against, and instead, when leaning forwards, my knees parted and my trunk fell forwards and downwards, putting huge pressure onto the front wheels and slowing me down so much that I was 8 minutes slower than in 1983 in what was supposed to be a bespoke racing chair. A consultation with my wheelchair designer/manufacturer, and a simple adjustment to the chair, resulted only 6 weeks later in completing the Piccadilly Marathon in 2h 47m 32s, over ¾ hour faster than my London time, and within 10 minutes of Kevin Breen’s winning time at London of 2h 38m 40s – though, naturally, courses are very different, and the Piccadilly course was, I thought, possibly faster than London, for a wheelchair at least.
On the few occasions subsequently that I met Brasher and Disley there still seemed to be a simmering resentment that they had been trumped over the wheelchair issue. But Brasher at least seemed to acknowledge that wheelchair marathoning could be an exciting event to watch: in the 1985 race, Jerry O’Rourke towed Chris Hallam all the way round the course until, as they crossed Parliament Square and reached the slight rise of Westminster Bridge, Hallam put in a tremendous sprint to overtake O’Rourke on the crest of the bridge. Brasher roared on the fiercely competitive finish, much as he roared on Ingrid Kristensen when she was trying to break 2 hours 20 minutes in what would then have been a world’s fastest time for a female runner (she didn’t make it). And at the end of the 1985 television transmissions, the BBC showed a final panel with mug shots of three winners: man, woman, and wheelchair.
Kevin’s time, the front-end start and the improvements in wheelchair design presaged a forthcoming clash between the start time and the Changing of the Guard. For a few years the solution was specific to the wheelchairs: once through Admiralty Arch at the start of The Mall, the wheelchairs were diverted left into Horse Guards Parade (where Trooping the Colour takes place). Here, a zig-zag section was introduced to make up the distance forgone by missing out The Mall and most of Birdcage Walk, and the wheelchairs rejoined the course just as Birdcage Walk became Great George Street. It worked, but was an unsatisfactory solution, not least for missing out the crowds along The Mall.
; This diversion probably also had the effect of depriving Mike Bishop of a win. In the late 1980s he was arguably the fastest man in a straight line in the country, and racing down the Mall he would have left the opposition for dead. But the multiple hairpin bends in Horse Guards Parade effectively ensured he never did win.
The solution to the problem came from changes to the main race. There was pressure from the elite athletes to have a starting time ahead of the main race. Then the elite women wanted a separate start, and an earlier starting time, so they didn’t get mixed up with non-elite men and, by being separate from the elite men, their race could be seen to have its own status and validity. All of these requests could be accommodated by having a later start time for the main, “people’s” race, but then there would be the issue of how long the police would allow the roads to be closed, so earlier start times it had to be. The wheelchairs also wanted a front-end start, for safety reasons ahead of all the running groups. We came in on the coat-tails of the issue, but ultimately benefitted from the solution. Rumours abounded that Jimmy Savile, purportedly in good odour with the Palace at the time, was used to approach the royal household with a request to allow The Mall to be used early enough to allow all the disparate interest groups to be accommodated. This meant altering the normal arrangements for the Changing of the Guard, which was agreed in about 1990 – I don’t know the exact date – but from then on the diversion through Horse Guards Parade was abandoned. Whether Savile was actually involved as the rumours had suggested I never found out.
For some years County Hall was used as the administrative headquarters of the race, and as the medical centre at the end of the race; but the Greater London Council was abolished by Parliament in the late 1980s, the building was sold off to provide hotel accommodation, and was therefore no longer available to act as the race headquarters. And then things changed again – though not in terms of the need for staggered starts – when the course was redesigned. Now, the final few hundred yards of the race continued further along the Embankment than the original route had done. It then turned into Parliament Square, along Great George Street and Birdcage Walk, in the opposite direction from the earlier races, and swung round to the right to finish on The Mall.
Late in 1984 Mick Karaphillides and I, together with a couple of others, were funded by Stoke to go to a marathon race in Oita, in the southernmost of the main Japanese islands. The race had started in 1981 as a half-marathon, in celebration of the International Year of Disabled People, and was expanded subsequently to a full marathon. This was tough on Gordon Perry, who by then had broken 3 hours and was a few minutes faster than me. But Stoke wouldn’t fund an amputee athlete, which Gordon was, and in any case Oita didn’t allow single leg amputees into their race, so that was that.
Apart from experiencing a completely foreign culture, it was interesting to see the state of wheelchair design, and to hear discussions, mostly from North America but also from Europe, about possible future developments, including ideas about moving to tricycles, which within a few years was the only design available. The race was won by the French-Canadian Andre Viger in 1h 46m 21s, way faster than anything seen in Britain. Aware of how far behind we still were, in both our own times and the facilities we could offer – accommodation, transport to the start, sweep-up services and so on – we didn’t issue any international invitations, beyond that to the Irish, for people to come and try London.
That perspective changed in 1987, which saw Swedish tetraplegic, Jan-Owe Matsson, taking part as a result of a private invitation from someone on our committee. The following year, either BSAD or Stoke received an invitation from Czechoslovakia to a wheelchair marathon in Brno, in southern Moravia, on the international motorcycle race-track. There was no funding, but if we could get ourselves there accommodation, food etc. would be provided. With an official invitation, we wouldn’t have to change x pounds per day each into Czech Koruna, and spend them, with no option to change any underspend back at the end, nor to bring back any unspent currency, export of which was at that time a criminal offence.
So, in late August, Mick Karaphillides, Chas Sadler and I drove out to Brno. They did the race – I didn’t, injured again – but the course was very hilly, quite unlike anything seen at home, with a rise and fall of a few hundred feet every lap – all 10 of them, again, quite unlike anything at home. However, one upshot of the contact was to issue an invitation to the Czechs for three or four athletes to come over to London in 1989. The winner of the Czech race, Karel Boura, was most impressive, beating both Mick and Chas handsomely, and in 1989 I was tempted to try to put a bet on him to win in London; but in the event, he didn’t come over – illness – and I was careless enough not to place a bet on David Holding from East Anglia, who had come to the fore in shorter races and was available in my local bookies’ at 33 to 1. He won the race, of course, the first of several victories.
None of the three Czechs produced startling times; they found the point-to-point nature of the course, without the relief afforded by the few hundred feet drop every lap, particularly hard. They didn’t, I think, come again, but the Velvet Revolution occurred later that year, and there will have been many races in the West much easier for them to gain access to than London.
It was about this time that I dropped out of the organising committee altogether, just as Tanni Grey appeared on the scene in the first of her six victories. Sometimes, I watched the race on the television, and noted with approval the developments that had taken place in terms of organising a race hotel, transport to the start and from the finish, and so on. And the race did, eventually, attract the top racers from Europe, North America and the southern hemisphere – South Africa and Australia – all beyond our wildest dreams when engaged in the original battle in the early 1980s.
There was an interesting sidelight thrown on that battle from an unexpected direction. The BBC has a series of programmes called “The Reunion”. Sue McGregor brings together a number of people involved in some earlier event to reminisce about how the event came to pass, what it was like to take part, what happened afterwards and so on. Amongst the events so reviewed have been the making of the film “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, the Kings Cross underground station fire, and the building of the Dome at Greenwich as part of the Millennium celebrations. In about 2010 there was a programme about the creation of the London Marathon, at the end of which Sue McGregor added, “In 1983 the wheelchairs were invited in …” I thought about writing, but life’s too short, and in any case the problem had long been sorted. Or so we thought…
Two matters deserve further comment. In 2013 at about 15 km into the race there was a collision between some wheelchair competitors and a female runner at a drinks station. She was Tiki Gelana, one of the elite group of women given a special start, and she was, moreover, the Olympic champion from the year before in London. Not just box office here, but in the whole of Latin America to boot. Seen from the television, this is what appeared to happen.
A group of women runners approached a drinks station. One woman (TG) detached herself from the group and moved to the right to pick up a drink – there were drinks tables on both sides of the course. At the same time, at the bottom of the screen, a group of five wheelchairs came into view, “drafting” in the way that road cyclists do. They were moving quite fast – between 15 and 20 mph, it was estimated – and my first thought was to wonder how on earth the runners could be where they were, if the wheelchairs had started in front of them. This thought was soon obliterated by the next move – the wheelchairs were running along the left- hand side of the course when TG, having found nothing to her satisfaction on the right- side table, dived across to the left to pick up a drink from there.
At the last minute – fraction of a second, actually – the wheelchairs tried to avoid hitting her. They couldn’t swerve to the right, because that was where she was coming from. They couldn’t speed up, because there wasn’t time to put in a speed burst. There wasn’t enough time for braking to have
avoided a collision, so they did the only thing possible, and the natural reaction of anyone in a chair being approached suddenly from one side. They swerved in the opposite direction, to the left, just as she collided with either the third or fourth wheelchair, pushing him into the trestle tables on which all the drinks sat. Tiki Gelana herself was injured, and hobbled on until about 22 miles, when she withdrew. There was near- consternation in the commentary box about the injury she had sustained – an Olympic champion, no less! – but as far as I can remember not a word about the possible injury to Josh Cassidy, the Canadian wheelchair athlete who had won the race a few years earlier, nor about possible damage to his wheelchair (costing, as it turned out, hundreds of dollars to repair).
The problem was, of course, the front-end start for the wheelchairs, or rather the lack of it. Over 30 years from the start of the original battle, and this was still going on! From Josh Cassidy’s words on the web:
“It’s something I have mentioned before. I don’t know who’s responsible, but every year we come to overtake the women, there’s 10 chairs going at 20 mph and the poor women are scrambling to find their feet. The safest thing would be to have the wheelchairs start first because one of these years a woman is going to have a leg broken, a career ruined. It’s just not worth having this programme if the racers are going to suffer.” Later, he tweeted: