BRENDAN FOSTER GEORGE MATHIAS
THE SIGN THAT A COMMENTATOR has truly mastered their art is when they become synonymous with their subject matter. John Motson achieved this with football, Ted Lowe with snooker…and Brendan Foster has with athletics. We’ve heard his voice for so long that watching the best athletes on the planet do battle will surely never feel quite the same after Foster’s retirement last August.
During a 35-year-plus stint as the UK’S voice of track and field, he covered nine summer Olympic Games and every Commonwealth Games since 1982. This April’s London Marathon will be the first missing ‘ Big Bren’ since the inaugural race 38 years ago.
Foster’s commentary was given added authority by the fact that he had once been a world-class athlete. A three-time Olympian, he also took Commonwealth silver and European gold in the 5000m in 1974, 10,000m bronze at the 1976 Montreal Olympics and Commonwealth 10,000m gold in 1978, setting world records for two miles and 3000m along the way.
But perhaps Foster’s greatest legacy to running will be the Great North Run, which he founded in 1981. From 12,000 participants in the first year, the event has become a behemoth, one of the world’s biggest half marathons. It hit the one-millionrunner mark in 2014 and last year, 57,000 people toed the start line. Foster’s Great Run series now sees over 200,000 people take part in one of its 33 events each year – and his plan is to have that annual figure top a million by the end of the decade. It’s one heck of legacy, and he’s not done yet…
THERE ARE RUNNING HEROES of all ages. George Mathias, an 11-year-old schoolboy from St Helen’s in Merseyside, has been using his running to raise money for Liverpool’s Alder Hey hospital, where the life of his younger brother, James, was saved.
James was born seven weeks premature, spent five days in a coma and was close to death. Thanks to the staff at the hospital, he has made a full recovery.
‘George said to me, “I really want to do something to say thank you’”, says dad Richard. ‘ I said, “If you come up with the idea, I will help you – but it has to be your idea and, to make people care, you’ve got to show some sacrifice.’”
So George set out to run one mile for every month his brother, who turned seven last year, had been alive. He’s since raised more than £ 50,000, picked up a Pride of Britain Award and run with a host of celebrities.
Former England footballer Steven Gerrard, multiple Olympic gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy, TV presenter Ben Shephard and comedians John Bishop and Jason Manford are among a long list of high-profile names to have run a mile with George. “If I had to pick a favourite it would be Ben Shephard,” says George, “as he was so nice to me and James.” With singer and X Factor judge Nicole Scherzinger and presenter Dermot O’leary having promised to do the same, George’s list of celebrity running buddies grows longer still.
“It’s just finding the time,” says Richard. “After school, it’s dark, and on the weekends, the celebs tend to be busy. So there’s a bit of a stockpile at the minute waiting to go for a run!”
Having already covered 100 miles, George has reached his original target. However, he’s not stopping there. ‘ I said to him, “You’ve done it now; you can stop,”’ says Richard. ‘And he said, “No way! I love it. I love raising money and getting people running.” It’s just becoming what he does now. So he says he’s definitely carrying on.’
To maximise his fundraising, George is going to focus on doing more community-based events and corporate runs, as that’s where the majority of money has come from so far.
‘ I’m going to run 200 miles,’ says George. ‘ I really love running as a hobby, and I want to carry on with the challenge and raise even more money for Alder Hey.’
George is an inspiration to us all, not only to run, but also to harness our running to do good, and we wish him many happy and meaningful miles to come.
YOU
won’t find the fastest marathon ever run in the record books. Rule violations, including the use of rotating pacers, rendered it ineligible as an official world record, but in May last year, Eliud Kipchoge’s 2:00:25 captured the world’s imagination and changed our perception of what’s possible in distance running.
The culmination of Nike’s long, sometimes controversial Breaking2 project saw the reigning Olympic Marathon champion grace the Monza Formula One race circuit in Italy with fluid beauty and a serene smile, and at an unfathomable average pace of 4:35.7 per mile, to break the tape just 26 seconds shy of the sub-two goal. By having the courage to put everything on the line, he had made what had been dismissed as impossible suddenly seem anything but. ‘I rank it as the highest ever performance in my life,’ says Kipchoge. ‘To show billions of people that the two-hour marathon is possible, that’s very important to me.’
To, in effect, do it alone after the other two runners in the Breaking2 team dropped off the pace early, with no rival to push him and, for the most part, no crowd to cheer him showed a particular kind of desire. His specially designed shoes, with their much-hyped and debated propulsive carbon-fibre plate, were inscribed with a personal, digitally printed handwritten message: ‘Beyond the Limits’. Like Bannister and other trailblazers before him, Kipchoge showed us the vision, belief and sheer guts to challenge what we believe we are capable of. Something that resonates with every runner, from the fastest marathoner on earth to those chasing down what once seemed an equally impossible parkrun PB.
Kipchoge returned to more conventional road racing, gunning for the world record in a recognised race setting, at the Berlin Marathon. He missed it by just over 30 seconds but won the race. In April he’ll race in the London Marathon and he will undoubtedly keep pushing beyond the limits. ‘This is not the end of trying to run under two hours,’ says Kipchoge. ‘There is more in the future.’