Gold triumph of St Modan’s teacher
I was saddened to hear about the death of Joe McGhee, yet delighted to learn that he had lived for so long — dying as he did at the ripe old age of 85. Joe taught me in English when I attended St Modan’s from 1954-57.
My everlasting memory of him will, of course, be his amazing achievement of winning the gold medal in the marathon at the Empire Games (which later became the Commonwealth Games) for Scotland in Vancouver in 1954.
I still wonder if Joe ever knew that we set up a plan to avoid ‘boring’ English lessons after the lunchtime break by asking him: ‘How did you actually win that race, Sir?’ — and away Joe would go taking us on a step-by-step run through the streets of Vancouver for 26 gruelling miles.
How could I have possibly known then how much of an influence that story was to have on me in my forthcoming journey through life?
Joe told us about how every athlete in the race — from Australia, Kenya, Canada and every other nation in the Commonwealth — had a plan of their own on how to run the race and pace themselves over the course.
However, Jim Peters, who was running for England that day, had made no secret of the fact that his plan was to run the first 13 miles of the race at such a blistering pace that he would build up such a lead that he would be able to finish the race at a more leisurely pace without fear of being caught.
This was all incidental to Joe as he was not considered among the favourites and would be only too happy to finish the race. In fact, he told us that he had made a promise to his family and friends back home that he would not “give up on his own accord” and would run until he was exhausted.
Consequently when he had gone around 15 miles and felt he could give no more, he decided to wrap himself around a lamp-post and collapse to the ground totally exhausted and waited to be picked up by the medical race stewards, which would automatically disqualify him for accepting assistance, therefore consoling him with the fact that he not given up of his own accord.
However after a few minutes on the ground he realised there were no stewards around that area, so what could he do but get up and carry on running.
Meanwhile up ahead, unknown to Joe, Peters had carried out his race plan almost to the letter and was well ahead of the field, only for disaster to strike in a cruel way less than a mile from the stadium and the finishing line. Exhaustion and what proved