www.belgraveharriers.com
This is sport - if there were no problems it would be too easy - March 28, 2006
Sunday was a day for reflection in many ways. The chaps and the dames who run Belgrave are forever looking ahead, in their attempts to keep the club in sound health, but to do this it often helpful to look to the past, where the fingerprints to the future lie. What were we doing 15 years ago – and 10 – and 5? Were we making mistakes - have we put them right? I was given a fine window into the past by travelling to the race with Alan’s team letter and directions for not this year (that’d be way too organized), but from that of 2000. It is clear that he wrote his tub-thumping letter to the runners that year sensing that we were finally a club on the up, after years of false dawns and mediocrity. Our success on the track had arrived in the 90s, and now perhaps, we could strike it big on the road.
In his Milton Keynes letter of 2000, Alan speaks of how the team was looking ‘rock solid’, and that we had a real chance of winning. Rock solid turned into mass capitulation, as, after he wrote the letter, half a dozen runners bowed out with various excuses. The runner for leg 11 was hauled out of the B’s the night before, and slung into the A’s despite having only placed 235/253 the year before. Photos from the 2000 race show him sporting a spectacular comb-over, as he slugged it out with Shaftesbury’s Nick Francis, a mere four-and-a-half minutes separating their ‘pb’s’. We ended up with a hard-fought bronze that day, and the leg 11 runner is the only survivor from the 2000 A-team to appear in the 2006 edition, minus sadly the comb-over.
It was bronze again the following year as only two relics survive (Me and Wardy – if you can call a 23-year-old a relic!) Surely no-one survives from the silver medal team of 1999 … but one does – even if he did memorably break the two cardinal rules of relay-running: don’t get lost, and don’t walk. Dear old Hassan did both and was promptly sent to the naughty chair for a few seasons. But his return to the fold in 2003 has seen him become a highly valued member, striking National gold in all sorts of events: 10k, half-marathon, cross-country.
Four master-blasters
What our teams lacked in those pre-2002 days were three elusive things: youth – average age’s veered the wrong side of 30; solidity – teams would bear little resemblance to the ones on the team sheet; and the ‘X-factor’: a lack of runners with that something ‘a bit special’ – who could turn a race on its head. We don’t have an X-factor runner now, either. As it happens, we’ve got four. In SS, DA, Wicksy and Jon, we have four master-blasters who form the foundation upon which our teams are built, with an average age of just 25. Long may they continue.
Was Sunday an anti-climax because of our dominance? I don’t think so! Not when you think of our support staff, who were there on Sunday: The Halls, the Meads, Gordon, Don, Bill, Rex and the President, you can tot up nearly 400 years of dedicated Belgrave service between them. Seeing our team perform as such a magnificent, coherent unit on Sunday owes a lot to their vision, belief, and determination. In the neighbouring tent we enjoyed Gerry North’s company – the ultimate X-factor man. What a brilliant, but at times lonely vigil, Gerry fought for the Bels in the ‘60s and ’70s.
You'll be back old son
The last word goes to Andy Swearman. I won’t deny that cold waves of panic were sweeping over my body as I stood at the start line for leg two, but you’ll be back old son, better than ever. And we’re very pleased to have you as part of the club. Look what happened to Hassan in ’99… we’ve all got to pay our dues. This is sport – if there were no problems, it would be too easy.
