Sydney, greeting and beating Lovelock

   
Sydney beating Lovelock (again?)

Letter of the week in the 11 January 2007 edition of Athletics Weekly

A true legend

SYDNEY WOODERSON, who died just before Christmas, was arguably the greatest athlete to have ever worn a British vest. Injury in 1936 and war during the two subsequent Olympics denied him chances to win the medals his standing in world athletics deserved and the attention that would still be given to such performances today. Obituaries elsewhere will eulogise on his performances on the track, which I was never fortunate enough to have seen. My memories of him were in other spheres.

We first met when I interviewed him about his coach, Albert Hill. Throughout the course of our time together he talked enthusiastically about others who had influenced his athletics career but whenever I tried to steer the conversation around to his own achievements he remained charming but was noticeably reluctant to talk about himself. Equally, he only accepted an honorary award from Roehampton University when he was assured that he would not have to give an acceptance speech.

Though shy and unassuming in public, on the track he dominated his events like few others have, either before or since - or for so long. He spent most of his leave during the war racing around the country. His status by then was so iconic that the author Richard Holt in Sport and the British said the "small, thin, dowdy; bespectacled man in Blackheath's all-black strip represented the courage and endurance that defeated Hitler's· armies".

Even after the privations of war and serious illness he managed to run faster than ever and win major races - and it was not unknown for sell-out crowds to be joined by others who broke into grounds simply to see the little man run.

To me he was the perfect athlete. The most telling comment he made came when I asked him if he regretted not being an athlete today, as his performances would have made him very rich. Without hesitation he responded that he loved his time in the sport; it was a hobby, relaxation and highly enjoyable. Today, he commented, he would be a full-time athlete; it would be his job and he would have to get out of bed in the morning and run as work. He would have lost much of the fun. No, he regretted nothing.

We will never see his like again. The era of the dedicated amateur is long past. He may have died but he has been a legend for so long that it seems he has not, and never will, leave us. Anybody who met him will have fond memories of a great, great man.
Dr Greg Moon, London NW5

12-01-07

First published by Athletics Weekly 20 December 1995

When Athletics Weekly was starting out,
Sydney Wooderson was a national hero.
Now he's a legend
Words: Trevor Frecknall

Accidental Hero

JUST ABOUT THE MOST enduring mystery in postwar British athletics is why Sydney Wooderson has never been knighted.
He so typified the stature and spirit of war-torn Britain, it was taken for granted by his friends and admirers that royal recognition would follow.
They're still waiting, while Wooderson spends his 82nd year in contented retirement with his wife in Dorset.
His eyesight, never the best, is "not at all good" now. But his wiryness - at 5ft 6in, he weighed in at 125lb for his best races - remains such that he still goes for a daily constitutional of two to two-and-a-half miles because "there's nothing like it to clear the mind."
And he recalls the high and low points of 50 and 60 years ago as clearly as if they happened yesterday ... but with a politeness and deference that belongs entirely to yesteryear.
Wooderson is almost apologetic about how little he trained to reach his pinnacles. "I did very much less than athletes today," he begins. "Most people would be shocked at the little amount of training I did.
“I was working, you see. It was in an office, pretty much nine to five, but it was not like today where athletes can fly over to Australia for the winter.
"I wouldn't have wanted to be a full-time athlete - though I suppose, if I was running today, I would have done what was expected of me."
As it was, he trained on four or five nights a week, after work as a solicitor in his native London.
He would warm up with a three miles jog. Then would come a set piece - a half-mile or three-quarter mile or one-and-a-half mile hard run, rounded off with a couple of miles jogged warm-down.
"I varied the set piece each time," he recalls. "But that was my training."
More confusingly for today's athletes , .who are being told to work more intensely, Wooderson reveals he had two lengthy rest periods each year.
"I would take a month's break after the end of the track season. Then I did some cross country up to Christmas, running at half speed or three quarter speed.
"From Christmas I had another six weeks break before beginning to prepare for the new track season.
Could this be where today's middle distance runners go wrong? "I hesitate to say it," says this quietly-spoken gentleman, "but it's my opinion that they don't rest enough. It's slightly different, of course, because they are full-time athletes, whereas I had a full-time job."
Does he envy the full-time athletes? "Oh no! I wouldn't like to do their hard work. It's too much pressure, I think.
"Those Grand Prix meetings, for example. The athletes have to do them. Once they are involved, it seems they have to do as they are told."
Stories are legion of Wooderson adhering to his amateur status by even turning down travelling expenses, and he almost shudders to recall: "There were two races when I was offered money. I was actually sent £12 after a race in Scotland. I sent it back."
His most extravagant reward? "I ran at a meeting at Derby and won a Crown Derby bowl. We still have it." He pauses, as if a novel thought occurs: "I bet that's worth something now"
Not worth nearly as much as his memories ... memories of a world that turned upside down at the very time when he would have been reaching the peak of his athletic prowess.
Not that he blames Adolf Hitler for robbing him of the chance to become the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes.
"Obviously I could have gone faster if I had been able to continue training," he says.
"Perhaps 4:01. something like that," he adds hastily, lest one begins to believe he envies Sir Roger Bannister's indelible place in history.
Doesn't Wooderson honestly believe he could have threatened the magical four-minute mark? "No, I don't really think so, I think it's a matter of progression.
"I did 4:06 before the War and 4:04 after the war.''
The 4:06 - to be precise, his world record 4:06.4 - came on August 28, 1937 in a specially arranged handicap race in London's Motspur Park that was so well publicised it attracted 3000 spectators.

Triumphs and pain
The following year, in Paris, he easily won the European I500m title in 3:53.6. These triumphs were sandwiched by his two greatest disappointments.
His love of walking in the countryside forced him to limp out of the 1936 Olympic 1500m heats in Berlin.
"I twisted my ankle while out walking," he says. "I was very prone to that kind of thing because it was very easy to keep on my toes. I always did quite a bit of walking every weekend. I liked to get out in the country, away from the house."
Despite the injury, he travelled to Berlin - literally, an innocent abroad. '"We were all housed in a village and it was quite enjoyable, really. I didn't get the impression of Hitler and the Nazis being terrible - but, then, they didn't want us to get that impression, did they?"
More remarkably, given his shyness, he recalls: "I chatted a lot to one of the Finnish 10,000m runners can't remember his name, though."

He may not have looked like an international athlete, but Wooderson could move with speed
"There were two races when I was offered money. I was actually
sent £12 after a race in Scotland. I sent it back."

But Wooderson's other great disappointment resulted from his unease among strangers - when he travelled to the USA for the Princeton Invitational Mile in 1939.
"I hoped to win it but my main worry was that I was not too used to talking to many people, or being away from home." He finished fifth in a race won by the USA's own Charles Fenke in 4:11.0 - Wooderson's only major defeat in three years.
The performance he rates as his greatest ended in defeat, too, but he still recalls it with considerable pride.
It came on September 9, 1945 in Gothenburg in Sweden, which had remained neutral through the Second World War.
While Wooderson laboured all hours in first the Pioneer Corps and then the REME from 1940-45 (because his C3 eye sight prevented him fighting on the front line), Swedes Arne Andersson and Gunder Haegg took slices off his world record.
At the age of 31, after very little training, Wooderson ran his fastest-ever 1500m (3:48.4) on his way to a mile PB of 4:04.2 behind the 4:03.8 of Andersson.
"It was better than my world record," asserts Wooderson. "Remember, I hadn't been able to train during the War. It was a remarkable thing after one summer's training and only three real races."
It was, too. But, then, his entire athletics career was remarkable, not only because he never actually looked like an elite athlete but also because it all began by coincidence.
"My elder brother started running, and winning, school races and I just sort of tagged along," he recalls. "Blackheath Harriers had a cross country match with the school every year, and it was a natural progression for me to join the club.
"It was just the fact that I liked running and I was determined to do the best I could.
"Why could I run? It's one of those mysteries. "Why are people actors, or singers, or dancers? Something draws them on ...
And does he have any regrets about the War so rudely interrupting his progress. Handing accolades to Andersson and Haegg ... and Bannister?
He shrugs: "You hand the torch, so to speak, onto someone else."
And what of those still carrying the torch of hope that he may yet become Sir Sydney "Oh, it's too late now, isn't it?"
Is it? Is it really?

Wooderson's heroes Ask Sydney Wooderson to name the athlete who has impressed him most during his lifetime, and he says: "Seb Coe, I suppose. Holding world records for the half and the mile and winning Olympic titles makes him the greatest Briton, don't you think? "But otherwise I would say Jesse Owens (who won the 1936 Olympics l00m (10.3sec), 200m (20.7) and long jump (8.06m) as well as a 4xl00m relay gold). "I always thought he was the tops, probably because I was younger when he ran. The easy way he sprinted was marvellous. "

SYDNEY WOODERSON Born in London on August 30,1914, he set a world record for the mile 4:06.4 in Motspur Park on August 28,1937, ran world records for 800m (1:48.4) an 880 yards (1:49.2) and won the European 1500m title in 1938, added the European 5000m crown in 1946 (In 14:08.6, then the second fastest time in the world, a week short of his 32nd birthday); and signed off by winning the English National Cross Country Championship in 1948.