My mates take the mickey out of me...I’ve made a living from a pulled hamstring!
DEREK REDMOND on iconic moment 30 years ago that transformed his life
ON his feet or on his wheels, Derek Redmond has always been pretty quick. But he knows he will never outrun that tearful guy with the shredded hamstring. Wherever Redmond goes nowadays, and he tends to reach most corners of the globe, his shadow will not be far behind, limping along and crying on to his dad’s shoulder.
‘It came up maybe four times last week,’ he tells Sportsmail. ‘Five the week before . . . sometimes it isn’t just me — other people bring it up as well.’
And with that, one of the most iconic figures in the history of the Olympic Games is having a good old giggle. This summer will mark 30 years since the ping they heard around the world and it still echoes today, an injury that transcended its circumstances in the most remarkable way.
So much has been said and shown of that moment, about the runner with the broken dream and the father with the broken son, and their arm-in-arm struggle to the finish of the 400 metres at Barcelona 92.
Depending on your point of view, it was the Olympic spirit made flesh, or something more schmaltzy, but for both the shallow interpretations and the deep, it is best to visit Redmond himself.
‘One of the clips on YouTube has been watched 90million times — basically, I had a bad leg, mate,’ he says, reclining on a couch in the garden bar at his lovely home in Northampton.
‘Bloody hell, my dad and me were invited down to NBC’s studios before London 2012. They had ranked it No 3 in all-time Olympic moments. It was ahead of Mark
Spitz’s seven gold medals in moments of Olympic history and Comaneci’s perfect 10. Barack Obama spoke about it in a speech! A bad leg!’
To this happy 56-year-old, frozen in a grimace by 1,000 montages, it has all become a little amusing over time. As it has been for 80-year-old Jim, as well.
It has also been exceptionally painful, and we will come to that, but these days it is mostly as Redmond describes: ‘I was a guy who pulled a muscle and needed his dad — now I am a guy who talks about pulling a muscle and needing his dad.
‘My mates take the mickey out of me, saying I’ve made my living from a pulled hamstring. I remember being at an event with Steve Backley (the three-time Olympic javelin medallist) and him saying, “When are you going to stop living off that same story, Redmond? Move on!” ’
And maybe he would, except some moments are just so powerful
they stick.
REDMOND is talking about bottles and bottle. Before getting into the business of perseverance and those narratives, he is discussing the empties that are fixed to the ceiling of his outdoor party area. There are 100 or more old wine bottles up there.
‘I didn’t drink all of these,’ he
says. ‘ A few, yes. But we got a bunch from bottle banks, I should be clear on that.’
This setting is quite something, from the bar with its stocked Champagne fridge and busy spirit shelves to the hot tub to the Greek statues to the ‘bigger bar’ inside where the DJ usually sets up for parties. Redmond and his wife, Maria Yates, have a good thing here, and a chunk of it across the past three decades has been paid for by that hamstring.
‘I have spoken for a living for 24 years now and I reckon I do 100 motivational talks each year around the world,’ he says. ‘In 80 of those, you can guess the hamstring is a big talking point. It is a massive part of my life.’
Most days he is perfectly cool with it, but there are still times all these years on that it bites, which of course feeds into why it has been a moment that has endured: if it was not so important to one person, or indeed two, then it never would have dug in so deep for millions of others.
Which takes Redmond to his memory of the day that defines him, on August 3, 1992. A Monday evening. As most will know, Redmond was a fine athlete, a European and world gold medallist in the 4x400m relay.
But by the time he got to Barcelona, his individual success had not matched his potential. Worse, the 26-year-old was loaded with the neuroses of eight lots of surgery, mostly to fix the achilles tendon he tore in his warm-up for the heats at Seoul 88. That had dominated his Olympic cycle, but when the Games rolled around, he was finally fit and strong as a favourite for a medal.
‘It was meant to be my time,’ he says, and it is a lament that has faded only slightly across 30 years.
In the first round, he was the quickest in the field, and then he won his quarter-final. After 150m of his semi-final, he was already thinking about what lane he might get for the final. That is when he felt the ping behind his right leg.
‘You know, when that happened the pain was instant but it took a moment for me to realise everything in my world had gone wrong,’ he says.
‘If you watch it back, I hobbled and went down to the ground for 15 seconds. I am doing the whole “Why me?” thing, but when I first got up I had this irrational thought that I could catch the guys up.
‘I hobble after them and clearly it is madness. Quickly I realise it is all over, but I don’t want the Olympics to beat me. It beat me in Seoul because I didn’t get
‘I didn’t want the Olympics to beat me. I was desperate to finish — so I just kept going’
to race but in my head I am desperate to finish this race. So I just kept going.’
After initial confusion in the crowd, a roar went up for Redmond, who was in obvious distress but was not yet crying. He would hold it together for a few more hops, until his father appeared over his left shoulder, having scrambled from his seat in the stadium and evaded security to get to his son. When he caught up, Derek wept uncontrollably in his father’s arms.
‘Thing with my dad is he has always been there for me,’ says Redmond. ‘Then and now. I spoke to him yesterday for an hour — he doesn’t do interviews any more but he would always do them with me, same as he was at almost any track meet I had around the world since I was seven. He saw his boy injured and he knew it was the end of my world after what happened in Seoul. Good luck stopping him getting on the track — obviously they tried.
‘I told him to just get me back to lane five so I could finish. Dad’s first wish was for me to stop as he thought I might be fit for the relay days later. I said, “No,” and he said, “Fine, we will finish together”.
‘He later told me that a stadium full with 65,000 people was no place for a family argument! He got me to the line and at that point you don’t think you will still be talking about it 30 years later. If I’m honest, all I felt was that I had failed. I wanted so badly to be an Olympic medallist and all those people cheering me was not a consolation.’
He had no idea amid the blast of applause that he had just delivered an all- time iconic sporting moment, nor that the emotion of it had sent his pregnant sister back home in England into labour.
In time there would be a hug from Linford Christie, with whom he had publicly rowed the previous year, and among other well- wishers, there were kind words from the swimmer Sharron Davies. From that first meeting they would eventually be married from 1994 to 2000.
Before the week was out, he had been interviewed by outlets from around the world.
‘You know, I’ve obviously thought about it all a lot,’ he says. ‘I think it’s the interaction with my dad that gets people with the whole thing. For some people it is about keeping on going when times are hard — it is nice when I hear that.
‘But the main reason I think it became a moment is because it is a father-son relationship. People can relate to that. It is a dad who just wanted to comfort his son when it all went a bit s***.’
THIRTY years on, Redmond finds it easy to be self-deprecating and good humoured about the time it went a bit s***, but it was awfully rough for a while.
‘For two years it was really bad,’ he says. ‘I just couldn’t talk about it. I gave my life to getting a medal — I had made the sacrifices, I was a clean athlete, I was good enough. It hadn’t happened and I actually resented those who were getting their rewards.
‘After that first two years, the next two I was angry but I could talk about it and since then talking
‘It became a moment because it’s a father-son relationship. People can relate to that – a dad wanted to comfort his son when it all went s***’
about it has been my living. I haven’t said this much, but there was a time, possibly up to Tokyo last year, where any British athlete getting an Olympic medal made me jealous. But I’m a long way past being tortured by it. Frustrated still? A little. But I’m a happy man.’
His agent recently estimated that his talks over the years have been attended by around one million people. The audiences of the videos are far greater still.
‘I actually thought about buying the rights to it a while ago,’ he says. ‘I would have had to pay £4,700 a second. The first 200m of that race were pretty quick to be fair, but the cost increases quite sharply after the hamstring goes.’
He is laughing. Even with his nagging sense of what-if, sport has been good to Redmond — aside from athletics, he was a national champion in kick-boxing and motorcycling, an England international in basketball, a semi-pro in rugby and lately has been boxing at a decent level. The injury, too, has worked for him, in its way.
‘It has — talking about it has shaped my life and my living,’ he says. ‘But you know what? If I had to swap it all for a medal of any colour from those Olympics and total anonymity, with no guarantee of earning a living, I would.’
Of course. But he cannot. And as he stretches out in his garden bar on a sunny day, he seems just about OK with that.