Ron Roddan
Athletics coach who took Linford Christie in hand and guided the sprinter to Olympic gold
RON RODDAN, who has died aged 91, was one of Britain’s most successful athletics coaches and the technical expert behind Linford Christie’s gold medal at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.
Over the years Roddan helped more than 30 top British athletes, including Wendy Hoyte, Darren Campbell, Katharine Merry, Joice Maduaka, Jamie Baulch and Ade Mafe. His talents were also sought abroad, and at various times he was called upon by Frankie Fredericks of Namibia, Bruny Surin of Canada and the great Merlene Ottey of Jamaica.
But Roddan’s name was most closely linked with Linford Christie, who described him as “my coach, my best friend and my second father”. He began working with the sprinter in 1979, when Christie was 19, but became frustrated by the athlete’s lack of commitment in his early 20s.
After Christie had missed out on Olympic selection in 1984, Roddan wrote him a formal letter, saying he would no longer be happy to be his coach unless he began to take the sport seriously. It proved to be the kick up the backside Christie needed. “Once he made his mind up he was going to do it properly, then he was very focused,” said Roddan. “He wanted to be the best in Britain, then the best in Europe, and then the best in the world. And he did it.”
Within two years of Roddan’s ultimatum, Christie had won his first international title with 200 metres gold at the 1986 European Indoor Championships, and over the next seven years he became the only British sprinter to win 100m gold in all four big championships – the Olympics, World, European and Commonwealth Games – finishing with a haul of 24 major medals.
Something of a maverick, Roddan was never really part of the official British coaching set-up, apart from a brief period in 1993, and was sometimes critical of the national coaching system. None the less, in 2016 he was inducted into the England Athletics hall of fame in honour of his achievements.
Ron Roddan was born on May 8 1931 in Crewe, Cheshire, but moved to London with his family when he was seven. In 1947,
aged 16, he joined the Thames Valley Harriers athletics club in Alperton, west London, and after two years’ National Service in the Army he went on to become a good 400m runner at county level before converting to the sprints. But quite early on it was clear that his future lay in coaching rather than competing, and in 1957, still in his mid-20s, he qualified as a sprint coach.
In an era of cinder tracks and rudimentary training facilities, Roddan had some early success when the junior sprint relay team he coached won a national 4 x 110 yards event. Then, in 1964, when his own Thames Valley coach, Arthur Filkins, retired, he took on Filkins’s roster of athletes, adapting many of his mentor’s training methods.
His first big successes came with the sprinter Dick Steane, who competed in the
1968 Olympics in Mexico City, and the 400m runner Mick Hauck, who won bronze at the 1970 Commonwealth Games. By the late 1970s Roddan had come across Christie, who was still a teenager at Henry Compton School in Fulham, and from 1979 coached him at the West London Stadium in Wormwood Scrubs, where the Thames Valley Harriers had moved to in 1967.
Once he had his full attention, Roddan was especially helpful in helping Christie get off to a good start from the firing gun, eliminating his rolling gait in the early stages of the race and, in conjunction with Christie, coming up with the idea of moving out of the blocks “on the ‘b’ of the bang”, a phrase that became widely used not just in athletics but in other spheres of life.
Christie certainly got off to a good start in the 100m Barcelona final, holding a decisive lead after 60 metres that was enough to give him gold at 32. Unfortunately Roddan was unable to see the race live, as he had badly twisted his ankle getting on to the bus that was taking him to the stadium. When he arrived he was in so much pain he could not make it to the coaches area, forcing him to watch the action on the television relay. Philosophically, he took a positive view of his misfortune, claiming that he saw more on the TV screen than he would have done trackside.
Despite his notable achievements, Roddan never became a professional coach. By day he worked first as an engineer and later as a laboratory technician, until in 1990, at 60, he was able to take early retirement and turn his attention to full-time coaching, existing off his pension and driving to training sessions in an old Ford Escort. Even during Christie’s greatest period of achievement he refused any offers of money, although he did accept help with travel and accommodation expenses when needed.
Roddan remained with Thames Valley Harriers for more than 60 years. Although he worked with so many top-line athletes, he was just as happy to give advice to club runners of more modest talent, taking great satisfaction if they beat their personal bests. Never married, he talked of the athletes as his “kids”, and in turn they, like Christie, generally saw him as a wise and kindly father figure.
Quiet, modest and unassuming, Roddan could be brutally honest when needed but was never a domineering taskmaster. “Some coaches are very much ‘do it my way or not at all’ but Ron wasn’t like that,” said Christie. “He showed me what to do, but at the same time I had input. Ron coached me and I helped Ron coach me.”
Roddan himself acknowledged that there was something indefinable in his make-up that most athletes appreciated. “I’m not pushy,” he once said. “I’m the opposite to what most sprinters are. They’re brash, loud and extroverted. I don’t know what it is, but I just seem to be approachable.”
Ron Roddan, born May 8 1931, died February 10 2023