I’ve loved it but you have to get out at the right time
BRENDAN FOSTER IS SET TO HANG UP HIS MIC
BRENDAN FOSTER is spooling through 37 years of commentary box memories when he stops at the biggest blooper he never made.
‘ It was the 1985 London Marathon and there was this great battle between Steve Jones and Charlie Spedding,’ he says. ‘Close race, neck and neck for miles.
‘They are coming towards Tower Bridge and then suddenly Charlie is running on his own. A minute later Jones reappears next to him, rubbing the back of his leg, and I say, “It looks like Steve Jones has had a cramp”.
‘I am alongside David Coleman and he quite calmly says back, “I think you got one letter wrong”.’
Foster starts laughing. Unknown to him at the time, Jones was not so much rubbing a sore hamstring as wiping it clean. A badly upset stomach, as it happened.
‘Thankfully, I don’t think the exchange actually made it on to the air,’ says Foster. ‘I had a few bloopers and that would have been a decent one.’
Foster is chuckling again. He has seen the lot in his time in athletics, first as the distance-runner who won medals from the Commonwealth Games to the Olympics and then in the subsequent four decades he split between talking about races and organising them.
But, aged 69, he has confirmed that his time as a commentator is just about up. This August’s World Championships in London will be his last behind a BBC mic — ending a run of covering every major athletics meet since 1983.
‘I have loved being there but you have to get out at the right time, before they have to apologise for something I say. I’ll miss it, but it’s hard going for old men staying on top of every single race.
‘You are in a privileged position to be in the front rooms of the public and if you take half measures you are abusing that position. It could be the Archbishop of Canterbury or the head of Barclays Bank watching and expecting you to inform them.
‘Funnily enough I was at a function last year and the Archbishop of York was there. He started talking to me about some race I had commentated on. But I’ve had fun doing this, right from the start.’
Foster’s mind goes back to the Moscow Olympics of 1980 and his decision to retire from running after a career that delivered two world records, an Olympic bronze medal and golds at European and Commonwealth level.
He was among the best in the world at a time when nations were pumping squads of athletes full of drugs, but by 1980 he was ready to stop. After finishing 11th in the 10,000metres in Russia, he was approached by a BBC executive with a proposal for a new start.
‘The Beeb knew I was sharing a room with Seb Coe,’ says Foster. ‘They also knew I got along with Steve Ovett so thought I might be OK as a voice on the huge race coming up — the 1500m, 20million audience and all that. I was about to retire and liked the sound of it.
‘I returned to our British team boss and asked if they minded. Well, this chap, ex-army I think he was, seemed happy enough with it so I said, “Good, I’ll just move out into the BBC hotel”. But no. He told me, “Oh, you can’t do that. While you are here you are my responsibility. You will have to fly back to London and I’ll discharge you and then you can come back”.
‘Well, a long story short, my first commentary should have been one of the great Olympic races. The reality is it was a cross-country in Gateshead in November.’
The subsequent years have put Foster front row at most of the greatest and darkest moments in athletics history. His strength has always been depth of insight — built on unparalleled relationships from Mo Farah, to Paula Radcliffe, to Haile Gebrselassie.
‘It has always bothered me when you hear people saying someone is rubbish when they don’t win or brilliant when they do,’ he says. ‘ There are always reasons for it and you want to know them. ‘I remember at the Rio Olympics and Mo Farah’s race for the 10,000m gold. Geoffrey Kamworwor had beaten him in the half-marathon in Cardiff and there was a question over whether he’d take him again.
‘But that afternoon Geoffrey’s coach Jos Hermens, who I used to race against, let me know Geoffrey had been sick and wouldn’t be a danger. He didn’t want me to say anything until the race had started, by which point I could put it on the air and it wouldn’t affect anyone’s tactics. He ended up 11th.
‘I’ve always got on very well with Mo but I wouldn’t tell him when I have information like that, just like I wouldn’t put it on air when he has told me before a race that he is tired. It would change how his rivals take on a race and why would I want to do that?’
He lists Radcliffe’s three wins in the London Marathon among his favourite memories, along with Cathy Freeman’s 400m gold in Sydney ‘when she had the weight of a whole country pressing down on her and still smiled like the same young girl’. But there is no doubting that he leaves his sport at a precarious time.
‘The doping problem is not new,’ he says. ‘I lost medals to whole nations of dopers, we all did. But it is depressing. And it has been bloody horrible commentating on people who you know have doped and you can’t say.
‘I’ve tried to be coded at times. A guy called Rashid Ramzi won easily in the 1500m in the 2008 Olympics and it was generally known what he had done. When it went to replay I said, “The only thing I can say about that race is I didn’t enjoy it one bit”. He was later stripped of gold.
‘I remember commentating on a guy who cheated against me and I said in the line-up, “There is one athlete I am not going to name”.
‘It does depress me because I love this sport. Thankfully Usain Bolt came along and has been a saviour and it will be a big loss when he goes.
‘But the right man is tackling this in Seb Coe (IAAF president). He is going after these people and that’s his big challenge.’
For Foster, the challenge beyond this summer will switch solely to managing his 70- odd staff and organising the biggest half-marathon in the world, the Great North Run, as he has since he created it in 1981. ‘I’ll be here until they force me out,’ he laughs. ‘Until then, they have to listen to me.’
Sadly for Beeb viewers, the same can only be said for another few weeks.