Steve Cram - still on track
By Tony Watts - Editor - 13/08/2010
In 1985, over 19 days, on three separate race tracks around Europe, a British athlete broke three world records at 1,500 metres, the mile and 2,000 metres.
It’s doubtful anyone will ever repeat that – only two men have set new mile records since for instance. No Brit has ever surpassed those times in a quarter of a century. Curiously, at the time, it didn’t seem so extraordinary. After all, for several years before that we had seen Steve Ovett and Seb Coe breaking world records for fun – each driving the other to new heights.
It was a golden time for British athletics and Steve Cram – the ‘Jarrow Arrow’ - seemed to personify that auric era with his blonde good looks, seemingly effortless, flowing style and a ‘kick’ that left other top athletes in his wake. If ever there was an athlete that could have graced a Grecian Marble depiction of the Olympics it would have been Steve Cram.
But hindsight – and years in the desert for our middle distance athletes – have given those startling achievements a new perspective. In July, 25 years on, a gathering of some of the world’s greatest sports people, past and present, met to celebrate them. The anniversary has also neatly coincided with Cram reaching the 50 mark – a milestone in his life that he has warmly embraced.
“It’s really about winding the clock back to where it all started,” says Steve, a few days ahead of the event. “1985 was a great year for sport, and it seemed a good idea to get some of the guys back together again. Said Aouita is flying in from the Middle East, John Walker for New Zealand, Kelly Holmes, Paula Radcliffe, Jonathan Edwards, Michael Johnson, Barry MacGuigan are coming. It seems a bit selfish – but everyone will enjoy meeting up again!”
What the dinner has done, of course, is to remind us just how good some of our athletes were. While Great Britain now does incredibly well in disciplines such as cycling, rowing and sailing, success in track and field is lagging far behind. “But we have got some good women coming through,” he says, “and with 2012 around the corner, that will help to bring out the best in them. For some reason, it’s easier to get young girls to train than it is boys – around the 14, 15 mark especially.”
And that’s the point about top athletes. They aren’t made overnight; they take years to forge and temper. “I was lucky in having someone like Brendan Foster – one of the biggest names in athletics – living round the corner from me when I was a young lad. And you need role models to inspire you, to drive you on,” says Steve.
Of course, no one stays at the top for long. Those 19 golden days came and went and while he went on to enjoy more success, Steve was soon looking to the future, and his natural rapport with athletes as well as his knowledge of the sport have made him one of our very best sports commentators. Not that he has entirely given up on running himself – and I remind him of the Bristol Half Marathon which he has been competing in for most of the last 10 years – and doing rather well in too. That race is an ‘out and back course’ along the Avon Gorge and seeing Steve Cram flying towards me on the return, at a speed I can only dream of, is a sight I will always treasure.
“Sadly I had to pull out this year with Achilles problems – I did it on a tread mill of all things! But I’m trying to keep in shape on my bike.” We discuss the fact that he was prevented by injuries from winning several major championships in his time – and he is remarkably sanguine about that, even missing out on an Olympic Gold that would surely have been his had he been able to peak at the right time.
“You expect injuries in sport,” he says philosophically. “I actually had a long career – 16, 17 years. Looking back, if I was running in the current era with all the back up and sports science they have now, perhaps I could have avoided them.”
It’s a tantalising thought – just how good would he have been in the modern era? Of course we can only speculate – and hope that, from somewhere, somehow, another Steve Cram will one day emerge for us to cheer on as they follow in some very famous footsteps and grace the track once again.