BECOME THE
RUNNER YOU
WANT TO BE!
RUNNER YOU
WANT TO BE!
David Bedford
Words by Julia Buckley
Words by Julia Buckley
David Bedford’s
performance in the first London Marathon, didn’t
exactly befit one of the greatest distance
runners of the 1970’s. But this was 1981 and the
former 10,000m world record holder had hung up
his racing shoes to become a nightclub owner. A
bloke at the bar threw down the gauntlet in the
early hours of the day of the race, betting £200
that Dave couldn’t get around 26 miles. David
took the bet, switched from beer to cocktails
(hoping the fruit juice would help) and later
went on to fuel up with a curry. In the Indian
restaurant he picked up the phone and woke the
race director, his mate Chris Brasher, to ask for
a place.
Brazen? Maybe. But confidence is something he’s never lacked. In his running heyday David Bedford was more than just an athlete, he was a star, perhaps the most celebrated British athletics has known. The public loved him, so did the press. Not only was he hugely successful, holding every British record from 2,000m to 10,000m in 1971, but he was also fantastically entertaining. With his wild curly mop and handlebar moustache he was rarely without a grin for the cameras, a steady supply of good copy for the newspapers and, it’s said, an eye for the ladies.
“I long for the day I pick up the Times and read that 118 have gone bust.”
Dawn broke. David pulled on his trademark red running socks, feeling in fine form. Everything went well until he got halfway around. At about mile 14 he was caught on camera being sick into a drain.
“I threw up a couple of times,” he tells me. “Actually, I was in all sorts of trouble. I won’t go into further details, but let’s just say it was the sort of the trouble you’d expect after half a dozen pints, several Pina Coladas and a curry at four o’clock that morning.”
Bootsie, as he’d been nicknamed back in the day, toughed it out and eventually made it across the finish line.
28 years later I arrive at London Marathon HQ to interview David about his role as race director. He’s a changed man, in some ways at least. Dressed in a shirt and tie, he sits down placing a Blackberry phone next to the cup of tea an assistant had left for him.
But in other ways, he remains the same.
“Nice to meet you, I’m David.” He extends his hand. A curteous introduction; with his shaggy hair-do (albeit greying somewhat) and that distinctive droopy moustache I could’ve hardly been in any doubt that the man I’d come to see had arrived.
Polite as he is, there’s no beating about the bush.
“Right, you’ve got half an hour of my time,” he asserts. “And, if you ask me a question I’ve never been asked before I’ll give you a pound.”
I look at my notes and, doubting I’ll be troubling his wallet, ask what changes we can expect now sponsorship of the marathon has been taken over by Virgin.
“Virgin have come on board with some very interesting ideas,” he says, “many of which we’re considering. In the first year they’ve said they’re going to ensure more money goes to charities, which is excellent. They’re also looking into ways to enhance the experience for runners, like a new pasta party at the expo.”
Sounds promising, but not exactly earth-shattering. Is there any truth behind all the talk of staggered starts and route changes?
He takes a sip of tea and sits back in his chair.
“Any rumours of a staggered start are not true,” he says. “I believe in one newspaper Richard Branson suggested that a change to the route might be possible. As an event we will always look at any ideas that come, but the current course has stood for 29 marathons and it works because it meets the numerous conditions you need for a race of this scale. You need plenty of space at the start, you need it to be 26.2 miles, which is quite important. You want it to be a fast course, a safe course and to pass as many of London’s sights as possible. I don’t think you’d want to change the finish, because London has the most spectacular finish of any event in the world. Could you change the start? Possibly, but there’d be a lot of criteria to meet. So, whilst we would consider a change to the route, we’d have to have a sound, well-thought out plan before testing it with 36,000 runners on race day.”
“I was in the sort of the trouble you’d expect after six pints, several Pina Coladas and a curry.”
What about the entry ballot? There was a fair bit of grumbling when they stopped accepting entries just three days after opening this year. Are there any plans to offer more places in the future?
David folds his arms and frowns a little. I don’t think this question is going to earn me a pound.
“The ballot closed when we had 12,0000 applicants, which was the number we said we’d allow. I don’t think we could’ve predicted it taking only three days when the previous year it was three weeks before we reached that level. Currently we have a system where people who get rejected five times have a guaranteed entry.
Brazen? Maybe. But confidence is something he’s never lacked. In his running heyday David Bedford was more than just an athlete, he was a star, perhaps the most celebrated British athletics has known. The public loved him, so did the press. Not only was he hugely successful, holding every British record from 2,000m to 10,000m in 1971, but he was also fantastically entertaining. With his wild curly mop and handlebar moustache he was rarely without a grin for the cameras, a steady supply of good copy for the newspapers and, it’s said, an eye for the ladies.
“I long for the day I pick up the Times and read that 118 have gone bust.”
Dawn broke. David pulled on his trademark red running socks, feeling in fine form. Everything went well until he got halfway around. At about mile 14 he was caught on camera being sick into a drain.
“I threw up a couple of times,” he tells me. “Actually, I was in all sorts of trouble. I won’t go into further details, but let’s just say it was the sort of the trouble you’d expect after half a dozen pints, several Pina Coladas and a curry at four o’clock that morning.”
Bootsie, as he’d been nicknamed back in the day, toughed it out and eventually made it across the finish line.
28 years later I arrive at London Marathon HQ to interview David about his role as race director. He’s a changed man, in some ways at least. Dressed in a shirt and tie, he sits down placing a Blackberry phone next to the cup of tea an assistant had left for him.
But in other ways, he remains the same.
“Nice to meet you, I’m David.” He extends his hand. A curteous introduction; with his shaggy hair-do (albeit greying somewhat) and that distinctive droopy moustache I could’ve hardly been in any doubt that the man I’d come to see had arrived.
Polite as he is, there’s no beating about the bush.
“Right, you’ve got half an hour of my time,” he asserts. “And, if you ask me a question I’ve never been asked before I’ll give you a pound.”
I look at my notes and, doubting I’ll be troubling his wallet, ask what changes we can expect now sponsorship of the marathon has been taken over by Virgin.
“Virgin have come on board with some very interesting ideas,” he says, “many of which we’re considering. In the first year they’ve said they’re going to ensure more money goes to charities, which is excellent. They’re also looking into ways to enhance the experience for runners, like a new pasta party at the expo.”
Sounds promising, but not exactly earth-shattering. Is there any truth behind all the talk of staggered starts and route changes?
He takes a sip of tea and sits back in his chair.
“Any rumours of a staggered start are not true,” he says. “I believe in one newspaper Richard Branson suggested that a change to the route might be possible. As an event we will always look at any ideas that come, but the current course has stood for 29 marathons and it works because it meets the numerous conditions you need for a race of this scale. You need plenty of space at the start, you need it to be 26.2 miles, which is quite important. You want it to be a fast course, a safe course and to pass as many of London’s sights as possible. I don’t think you’d want to change the finish, because London has the most spectacular finish of any event in the world. Could you change the start? Possibly, but there’d be a lot of criteria to meet. So, whilst we would consider a change to the route, we’d have to have a sound, well-thought out plan before testing it with 36,000 runners on race day.”
“I was in the sort of the trouble you’d expect after six pints, several Pina Coladas and a curry.”
What about the entry ballot? There was a fair bit of grumbling when they stopped accepting entries just three days after opening this year. Are there any plans to offer more places in the future?
David folds his arms and frowns a little. I don’t think this question is going to earn me a pound.
“The ballot closed when we had 12,0000 applicants, which was the number we said we’d allow. I don’t think we could’ve predicted it taking only three days when the previous year it was three weeks before we reached that level. Currently we have a system where people who get rejected five times have a guaranteed entry.
If we didn’t limit the ballot we couldn’t
continue with this because the amount of people
getting rejected five times would go up to a
level where every place went to them and there’d
be no ballot. We can only accommodate 36000
runners. I wish we could make the streets wider
for the day, but we can’t. So we’ve just got to
manage it as best we can. I suppose we could take
it over to the M1 and have everyone run up to
Watford and back, but I think we’d be slightly
losing the point of the marathon.”
Gripes aside, running the London Marathon is a landmark experience in many people’s lives.
“I think it’s up there with the big rites of passage for many of our runners,” David says. “Being born, having sex for the first time, getting married, having kids, running the London Marathon and dying. It’s right up there. Is it better than having sex for the first time? …If I had to choose, um, I don’t know.” He chuckles. There’s old Bootsie again.
I ask if he laments the absence of colourful characters among today’s elite runners.
“Young runners are different nowadays,” he says. “They’re just not prepared to put in the amount of work that’s needed - for no reward - to become a quality distance runner. Paula Radcliffe has done something to change that among the women, she’s an inspiration, but there’s no one among the men.”
As a teenager David was as committed as they come. At 14 on a family holiday to the Isle of Wight he got up one morning and ran the entire perimeter of the island, 48 miles in all.
“I don’t know whether you have to be mad to do that kind of thing or just fascinated to find out how much your body can take,” he says. “But until we get young people who are up for that kind of thing, who genuinely enjoy running for its own sake, who are prepared to do almost anything necessary to find out what their limits are, I’m afraid it will continue to be a bit slow.”
These are sentiments, his son, Tom (26), must be very familiar with. There’s currently a bet in place, “which,” says David, “like most interesting bets, developed in a bar.” Conversation had turned to the current standard of distance running and Tom boasted that he could run a marathon in 2hrs 25mins. “I said that’s 20 minutes off the world record, but you still won’t do it,” David tells me. “I just didn’t think he had the commitment. However, he put in 90 miles last week – he’s training for the Chicago Marathon in October - so maybe he’ll prove me wrong.”
“Is running the London Marathon better than having sex for the first time? Um, I don’t know.”
There’s a pause, which is bad. There’s not much time left, I need to keep him talking. The only points scrawled on the page which we haven’t yet covered are ‘Air Quality’ and ‘118’. I decide to leave the tricky one till last and ask if he thinks pollution is a problem for the London Marathon.
He raises a bushy eyebrow. “I could give you a pound for that question, that’s a new one… Air quality is better during the London Marathon than any other day of the year because so much traffic avoids it. But anyway, I think its fine. Granted, it’s not like on the Isle of Wight, where all you can smell is sea and gull shit, but London is fine for me. I’m proud to be a Londoner, I think we’ve got a wonderful city and personally I don’t have any issues with the air quality.”
This would probably a good point to end on, but there’s still a couple of minutes left before the half hour is up and I can’t resist using them. Unsure how to approach the subject I ask if he minds me asking about ‘the 118 thing’. (I’m referring to the series of advertisements by directory enquiries service, 118 118, featuring a pair of 1970s runners with Zapata moustaches, curly hair-dos and red socks. They were apparently caricatures of David Bedford. They neither paid nor even sought his permission and he found it somewhat annoying.)
To my relief he merely chuckles. “Well,” he says, “They lost a case in front of Ofcom where they were told to change the character significantly so it ceased to reflect me, and in their opinion they have. So that’s that. But from a personal point of view, I think their argument that they didn’t know it was me, never heard of me, etc., was insulting and I long for the day I pick up the Times and read they’ve gone bust. They’re the most expensive out there and there are far better services,” he concludes with a grin and a slap of the table.
Time’s up.
We stand for the usual thank you’s and hand shakes. Then out comes David’s wallet.
“Here you go then.” He hands me a
pound coin.
“Err... Thanks.” I say.
Which was a new one for me too. Brilliant. But better than running the London Marathon? No chance. RF
Gripes aside, running the London Marathon is a landmark experience in many people’s lives.
“I think it’s up there with the big rites of passage for many of our runners,” David says. “Being born, having sex for the first time, getting married, having kids, running the London Marathon and dying. It’s right up there. Is it better than having sex for the first time? …If I had to choose, um, I don’t know.” He chuckles. There’s old Bootsie again.
I ask if he laments the absence of colourful characters among today’s elite runners.
“Young runners are different nowadays,” he says. “They’re just not prepared to put in the amount of work that’s needed - for no reward - to become a quality distance runner. Paula Radcliffe has done something to change that among the women, she’s an inspiration, but there’s no one among the men.”
As a teenager David was as committed as they come. At 14 on a family holiday to the Isle of Wight he got up one morning and ran the entire perimeter of the island, 48 miles in all.
“I don’t know whether you have to be mad to do that kind of thing or just fascinated to find out how much your body can take,” he says. “But until we get young people who are up for that kind of thing, who genuinely enjoy running for its own sake, who are prepared to do almost anything necessary to find out what their limits are, I’m afraid it will continue to be a bit slow.”
These are sentiments, his son, Tom (26), must be very familiar with. There’s currently a bet in place, “which,” says David, “like most interesting bets, developed in a bar.” Conversation had turned to the current standard of distance running and Tom boasted that he could run a marathon in 2hrs 25mins. “I said that’s 20 minutes off the world record, but you still won’t do it,” David tells me. “I just didn’t think he had the commitment. However, he put in 90 miles last week – he’s training for the Chicago Marathon in October - so maybe he’ll prove me wrong.”
“Is running the London Marathon better than having sex for the first time? Um, I don’t know.”
There’s a pause, which is bad. There’s not much time left, I need to keep him talking. The only points scrawled on the page which we haven’t yet covered are ‘Air Quality’ and ‘118’. I decide to leave the tricky one till last and ask if he thinks pollution is a problem for the London Marathon.
He raises a bushy eyebrow. “I could give you a pound for that question, that’s a new one… Air quality is better during the London Marathon than any other day of the year because so much traffic avoids it. But anyway, I think its fine. Granted, it’s not like on the Isle of Wight, where all you can smell is sea and gull shit, but London is fine for me. I’m proud to be a Londoner, I think we’ve got a wonderful city and personally I don’t have any issues with the air quality.”
This would probably a good point to end on, but there’s still a couple of minutes left before the half hour is up and I can’t resist using them. Unsure how to approach the subject I ask if he minds me asking about ‘the 118 thing’. (I’m referring to the series of advertisements by directory enquiries service, 118 118, featuring a pair of 1970s runners with Zapata moustaches, curly hair-dos and red socks. They were apparently caricatures of David Bedford. They neither paid nor even sought his permission and he found it somewhat annoying.)
To my relief he merely chuckles. “Well,” he says, “They lost a case in front of Ofcom where they were told to change the character significantly so it ceased to reflect me, and in their opinion they have. So that’s that. But from a personal point of view, I think their argument that they didn’t know it was me, never heard of me, etc., was insulting and I long for the day I pick up the Times and read they’ve gone bust. They’re the most expensive out there and there are far better services,” he concludes with a grin and a slap of the table.
Time’s up.
We stand for the usual thank you’s and hand shakes. Then out comes David’s wallet.
“Here you go then.” He hands me a
pound coin.
“Err... Thanks.” I say.
Which was a new one for me too. Brilliant. But better than running the London Marathon? No chance. RF
