1954 - Chris Chataway breaks 5000m world record

[richard]

The Archive: This week marks an athletics anniversary so memorable that it even eclipsed the iconic first sub four-minute mile.

Roger Bannister's historic run was in May 1954, yet Chris Chataway's world 5000 metres record, a victory over Vladimir Kuts at London's White City on October 13 that year, usurped Bannister in the public conscious.

The first BBC Sports Personality of the Year award was made very soon after, and went to Chataway who had merely been pace-maker for Bannister in the spring.

The difference, perhaps, is that Chataway raced in a match between London and Moscow, live on Eurovision. Bannister's mile was not televised live. The White City race was witnessed by a 45,000 crowd who watched as two spotlights tracked the leaders. The Oxford crowd had been just a few hundred.

In between these races, Chataway took 5000m silver in the European Champion-ships, splitting Kuts and Emil Zatopek, but he was 12 seconds behind the winner who broke the world record in the first sub 14-minute run.
Kuts's tactics of repeated bursts were unique at the time. "I didn't take him seriously," said Chataway of the European event. "I thought he was a lunatic running out in front."

Forewarned, he held on in London to take five seconds from Kuts's world best. "I couldn't have run six inches faster," he said. That record, 13min 51.6sec, lasted for just 10 days. Kuts regained it in a race against Zatopek. Gordon Pirie and Dave Moorcroft are the only UK runners to have held the 5000m record since.

The world best is now 12:37.35. No Brit has broken 13 minutes.
Kuts ballooned to 20 stones, and just 48, died in 1975, but Chataway is still active at 75. He finished the Great North Run a week ago yesterday in 1hr 38min 57sec, though he took no exercise for 28 years and was a heavy cigar smoker.

Oxford-educated Chataway competed in two Olympics, retiring at 25 after the second. He was a Guinness executive, helping launch their eponymous book of records, and he had already been the first ITN news-reader when he became an MP aged just 28.

His maiden Commons speech expressed a radical view for a Tory: that England's cricket team should boycott the South African Tour due to apartheid, and he campaigned to repeal the law which criminalised homosexuality.

He was the minister of post and telecommunications who framed legislation launching commercial radio, and was also minister for industrial development. He quit politics aged just 43.

In the City, he held several directorships, and chaired the London Education Authority, and Civil Aviation Authority.

He helped his friend Chris Brasher establish the London Marathon, and was president of the Commonwealth Games Council for England before being knighted in 1995.

Nine days ago, Chataway was denied another athletics record. When he finished 1959th in a field of more than 36,000, he was chasing the fastest over-75 half marathon time by a Briton. Yet he was almost five minutes outside the British best, 1:34.04, by Glasgow's Gordon Porteous who is still running aged 92.


Source
DOUG GILLON
theherald.co.uk