The Great RON CLARKE

Описание

The famed distance runner Ron Clarke, passed away at the age of 78.

Clarke died in a Gold Coast hospital after a short illness.

Among his lifetime achievements, he was a successful businessman, an environmental crusader, the mayor of the Gold Coast for eight years, a philanthropist and a devoted family man.

But it is as a runner that Clarke is best known. He was an athlete who literally changed his event.

Clarke showed in the 1960s that distance runners could race hard, race often, race anyone and everyone, but mostly that you could run a lot faster than had previously been thought possible.

His assault on performance barriers was stunning: in his halcyon days Clarke took almost 40 seconds off the world record for 10,000m between December 1963 and July 1965 – 36 seconds in one race – and 18 seconds off the world record for 5000m between January 1965 and July 1966.

Clarke came to record-breaking early, setting world junior records during the build-up to the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956.

In a memorable race in January of that year, in which John Landy ran the first sub-four minute mile on Australian soil, Clarke set a world junior mile record.

He was subsequently hailed as a potential champion but his Melbourne Olympic chances were dashed by his compulsory national service falling due that year.

The consolation prize was that he was chosen to carry the Olympic torch on its final leg around the Melbourne Cricket Ground and to light the Olympic flame.

After 1956, Clarke’s running stagnated and he then put his sporting career on hold while he acquired his accountancy qualifications and established himself in working life; marrying Helen and starting a lifelong partnership which endured better even than his record-breaking running abilities.

17 world records

Returning to the sport in 1961, Clarke quickly re-established himself.

His first of 17 official world records was set at 10,000m (and six miles en route) in the 1963 Emil Zatopek 10,000m in Sydney. Clarke often joked there were so few people there that he knew most of the crowd.

A sequence of prolific records but also championship failure followed. Clarke won an Olympic bronze medal over 10,000m in Tokyo in 1964 and silver medals at three miles at the Perth Commonwealth Games in 1962, at three and six miles in Jamaica in 1966, and at 10,000m in Edinburgh in 1970.

Frank Shorter, the US athlete who won the 1972 Olympic marathon and was second in 1976, spoke once of the impact Clarke had on him.

“Ron Clarke was my idol. I grew up seeing Ron Clarke in the dark blue singlet with the V on it – to me that was the symbol of running."

As for Zatopek, he gave Clarke one of his gold medals. Slipping it into the Australian’s hand as he was about to board a flight out of Prague in 1968, Zatopek said simply: “You deserve this.”

If that is what Emil Zatopek thought, who is anyone else to quibble?