‘I would love to see Farah take up my microphone’
As he calls time on his commentary career, Brendan Foster tells Tom Cary why he will always be an evangelist for his sport
Brendan Foster has not vacated the commentary booth just yet but the soon-to-be-retired voice of BBC athletics is already lining up his replacement. “Mo [Farah] should take up the mic,” says the man who, at 69, will be calling his final World Championships in London, ending a run of covering every major athletics meet since 1983.
“I mean, it’s not my job to recruit him but that’s what I think should happen. If Mo was a physicist, they would be sending people over from Harvard University to extract his knowledge, wouldn’t they? He knows more about winning world titles than any other sportsman in Britain. And it’s my view that the media, and the BBC in particular, need to capture Mo Farah and have him involved in the translation of the sport for the public.”
Foster has always been big on bringing the sport of athletics – specifically middle- and longdistance running – to the masses.
While some might be uncomfortable with his unequivocal support for Farah, particularly while the four-time Olympic champion refuses to give press interviews and while his coach is being investigated for multiple doping offences, no one could doubt Foster’s absolute commitment to his sport.
As the founder of the Great North Run, which has persuaded more than one million people to make the 13.1-mile journey from Newcastle to South Shields since its inception in 1981, and as one of the most recognisable voices at BBC Sport, the Hebburn-born athlete has arguably done more than any other figure in this country to promote running.
It is a “privilege and a responsibility”, as Foster describes it, one he has taken seriously almost his entire adult life. Ever since joining Gateshead Harriers, having caught the running bug watching Abebe Bikila win barefoot in Rome in 1960, he says he has seen himself as a sort of “evangelist” for his sport. “Well, there weren’t so many of us runners in them days,” he explains. “We’d meet someone and tell them to take up running.”
After a career in which he won Olympic bronze in the 10,000m at Montreal in 1976, as well as European and Commonwealth gold medals, Foster continued his mission for over 30 years from behind the mic.
If his approach meant at times the line between journalist and supporter was blurred – “I think that’s fair criticism, I really do. If anything I have been too chummy with the athletes” – it also afforded him a unique perspective; his depth of insight built on unparalleled relationships with everyone from Farah – who he has known and mentored since he was a junior – to Seb Coe to Paula Radcliffe to Haile Gebrselassie.
On the day we speak, the BBC has just broadcast Brendan Foster:
A Life in Athletics, in which all of the above offer glowing tributes. Set against the backdrop of the industrial North-east, with Dire Straits and Roxy Music providing the soundtrack, it is a warmhearted look at a man who clearly made the absolute most of his abilities as an athlete before going on to even greater achievements. Foster had not actually seen the documentary until it went out.
“I enjoyed it,” he says, “particularly the Seventies tracksuits, which I hear are coming back into fashion. And the various hairstyles. And the moustache! I literally had a moustache for 10 days of my life – I was a chemistry teacher at the time and I grew one in the summer holidays to see what it looked like – and it happened to be the weekend I broke the world record [for two miles in 1973]. As soon as I saw the picture in the newspaper, I shaved it off.”
Foster admits he will almost undoubtedly regret his decision to bow out at 69 – “but not half as much as my wife who is going to get fed up saying ‘For God’s sake, why are you sitting in the front room commentating to me?’” – but says he cannot think of a better time to go than at a home World Championships, the biggest athletics event in this country since London 2012, with Farah stepping back from the track this summer to focus on road running and Usain Bolt also retiring.
He believes the sport is in good shape – “at least on the participation side, which has never been more popular” – while his friend, International Association of Athletics Federations president Coe, is “trying to make the sport of athletics a better place” after years of corruption and scandal.
What is he most looking forward to over the next eight days?
“The 10,000m [tonight]. On the basis that Mo is in contention – and I think he will be – the place will be going crazy. It will be like the London 2012 Games recreated.”