Winning ways and hard times of runners-up
There’s no shame in coming second – but no one remembers those who do. Now a new book finally sets out to change all that
WINNING is everything. Or so they say. But perhaps it’s time to raise a toast to the humble runners-up. In The Book Of Seconds, Mark Mason has delved into history to find out what happened to these brave also-rans.
Unsurprisingly, many stories feature British underdogs determined to keep calm and carry on – whatever the odds.
Take for example the Cornishman who became the second person to ride over the famed Niagara Falls inside a barrel.
American school`teacher Annie Taylor had been the first in 1901, surviving her 188ft drop with only a cut to the head but warning: “No one ought ever to do that again.”
Unperturbed, Bobby Leach decided to ignore her advice, successfully plunging down the natural wonder 10 years later, encased in an 8ft steel container. But the 54-year-old circus performer came off worse, suffering two broken kneecaps and a fractured jaw.
After 23 weeks recovering in hospital he went on to make a good living... giving lectures about his daredevil exploits around the world. Ironically, in 1926, Leach slipped on an orange peel in a street in New Zealand and broke his leg, soon dying from complications when an infection set in.
A no less eccentric character was Bill Burgess, who became the second man to swim the English Channel. Captain Matthew Webb had set the benchmark back in 1875 but Burgess, who ran a humble motoring business, was determined to match him.
Finally – at the 16th attempt and aged 39 – the 15-stone Yorkshireman made it across the 21 miles smothered in lard in September 1911. Incredibly he had completed the 22-hour task wearing leaky motorcycle goggles and fuelled with precisely 20 drops of champagne every 60 minutes.
Burgess celebrated his safe crossing with some more bubbly.
ACTORS who have come to TV and film roles second, with mixed success, also feature in the book. William Hartnell achieved fame as the first Doctor Who for example but it comes as a shock to discover his successor Patrick Troughton originally considered playing the sci-fi character as a “piratical figure in a turban with his face blacked up”.
Australian George Lazenby, a successful male model and star of the Big Fry chocolate commercial, also struggled when he followed Sean Connery as James Bond in the film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969.
He quit the role immediately after the movie opened, slammed as “bloody impossible” to work with by co-star Diana Rigg. Lazenby went on to study drama but ended up “flat broke” by 1973.
Possibly the most famous individual to come second was Captain Robert Falcon Scott. The explorer aimed to conquer the South Pole in 1912, only to get there and discover that Norwegian adventurer Roald Amundsen had beaten him to it.
What few people realise is that Scott magnanimously carried a letter back from the Pole, written by his rival, to announce the latter’s achievement. Amundsen had asked whoever found the missive, addressed to Norway’s King Haakon, to pick it up in case he had perished on the return leg.
Sadly it was Scott and his party, not Amundsen, who were to die making their way back. The letter was found on Scott’s body.
An equally selfless individual was John Landy, the second man to run ECLIPSED: Second Moon mission’s Pete Conrad, bottom left, and 007 mark two George Lazenby were overshadowed by Armstrong and Connery the sub-four-minute mile. He was pipped to the post by just four weeks by Roger Bannister in May, 1954. Two years later Landy was competing in the 1500 metres at the Melbourne Olympics when he stopped to check on fellow competitor Ron Clarke, who had fallen while leading the race.
After making sure Clarke was all right, Landy made up time to win the race and claim gold.
Yet his name is likely to be as unfamiliar as Britisher Frank Hadow, the second man to win the men’s singles championship at Wimbledon in 1878.
Taking a break from running his coffee plantation in Ceylon, Hadow easily beat the previous champion Spencer Gore, 7-5, 6-1, 9-7.
But he refused to defend his title the following year, dismissing tennis as essentially a “sissy’s game played with a soft ball”.
More recently the second person to win the £1million prize on the gameshow Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? also refused to let success go to his head.
Judith Keppel, the show’s first £1million winner in 2000, went on to star in TV’s Eggheads. But the next to do so, physics teacher David Edwards, went back to the classroom, where pupils would regularly “ask him for a tenner”.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would become household names after becoming the first men to walk on the Moon in July 1969. New movie First Man particularly memorialises Armstrong.
But spare a thought for Peter Conrad and Alan Bean, the second crew to get there. Conrad danced among the craters but back on Earth he went unnoticed and even ended up doing an American Express advert featuring “famous people” that no one recognised.
The astronaut said he became better known for the commercial than his lunar adventure.
Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had earlier secured his place in history as the first man in space, narrowly beating US astronaut Alan Shepard three weeks later.
Shepard’s mission had been delayed when a test flight featuring a chimp had to be repeated and he would later write that he’d have won the race with Gagarin, “if only the damn chimp’s ride had been on the mark”. He would have to settle for being the first man to hit golf balls on the Moon when he landed there with Apollo 14 in 1971.
HOWEVER Shepard is probably better remembered than the second US president to be assassinated. Sixteen years after Abraham Lincoln’s killing in 1865, James Garfield was gunned down on July 2, 1881, at a railway station in Washington DC.
He was by all accounts a remarkable man who could write in Latin with one hand and Greek with the other at the same time.
The 49-year-old clung to life until September 19 as a bullet remained lodged in his body but with doctors unable to identify its location.
Inventor Alexander Graham Bell, best known for the telephone, even used his new metal detector to try to find it. He failed but only because doctors wrongly thought the bullet was on Garfield’s right side and wouldn’t let Bell use it on the left.
Yet Mark Mason believes that our obsession with those who come first means we often miss some of history’s most intriguing episodes.
He says: “It has been fun finally to get these people the attention they deserve.” To order Book Of Seconds: The Incredible Stories Of The Ones That Didn’t (Quite) Win by Mark Mason (£14.99, Weidenfeld & Nicolson) call The Express Bookshop with your card details on 01872 562310. Alternatively send a cheque payable to Express Bookshop to Seconds Offer, PO Box 200 Falmouth TR11 4WJ or order online at expressbookshop. co.uk UK delivery is free.