Barefoot runner raced to 5000m gold

Bruce Tulloh, who has died aged 82, was a longdistance runner best known for winning gold over 5000m in the 1962 European Championships – a feat that he accomplished barefoot, in only 14 mins 0.6 secs.

One of the earliest advocates of barefoot running, Tulloh had honed his technique on the grass tracks of Devon and the beach at Instow, where the soft ground made shoes unnecessary. In 1961 he agreed to be the guinea pig of Dr Griffith Pugh, a pioneer of exercise physiology and scientific adviser to the British mountaineering team that climbed Everest in 1953.

To test the theory that barefoot running was a more efficient form of exercise, Pugh collected breath samples from Tulloh after the runner had completed a mile both with and without shoes.

‘‘We found that running in bare feet was at least 1 per cent more efficient, in terms of oxygen cost, than running in lightweight shoes,’’ Tulloh reported.

Another advantage to the technique was that it allowed Tulloh to accelerate more quickly, giving him an edge over his competitors as he approached the finish line. It was this that sealed his victory in the 1962 championships, as he pulled away with 700m to go, beating the Russian favourite Pyotr Bolotnikov to the title.

Though Tulloh’s small, thin frame might have looked unprepossessing to rivals, his performance on the track made him a crowd favourite. In 1962 he was the fastest British athlete over one, two, three and six miles, and ran his first and only sub four-minute mile that same year.

He was born Michael Swinton Tulloh at Datchet, Berkshire, into a family of keen athletes. When not competing, he pursued a wide variety of interests. In 1971 he went for a two-year teaching job to Kenya, where he gave lessons to the athlete Mike Boit, helping him to a bronze medal in the 1972 Munich Olympics. His books included Running is Easy (1996) and Running Over Forty (2001). In 2015 he published How to Avoid Dying (for as long as possible) ,a witty guide to later-life fitness, to mark his own 80th birthday.

He married Sue Baker in 1961. She and their three children survive him. – Telegraph Group