Life on the Run (30 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two: Matters of the Heart

Even as late in my life as 1996, I was called on as a celebrity for a special task. This was to launch the National Lottery Scratch Card in the Thames Valley. I had to go to a local garage who were the first to be ‘switched on' to the new system for the Scratch Cards, and be photographed wearing a cap promoting the new gamble. The photographs were supposed to go out to all local papers to promote the start of the Scratch Card era. They did, but the PR fell a bit flat as the system did not work and people could not immediately buy their cards.

In May 1998, as a result of the money lost on the Reading Half Marathon, we decided to cut our losses and move from Reading where we had lived for forty-one years, and out of the county of Berkshire where I had lived for sixty-two years, to Didcot in Oxfordshire; a smaller town but very conveniently situated for wherever we might want to travel. The move has been good and not least because the medical attention I have received at the Radcliffe Infirmary, the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and from my local GP, since moving counties has been excellent. Didcot is now our home, and we have found it a very pleasant place to live with the lovely countryside so close to hand.

My final ‘real job' was from 1995 to 2000 with SportsAid Southern, ‘The Charity for Sport', where I was the Regional Director. When I started with them in March 1995 they were in trouble, and not able to pay their way or meet their obligations. I agreed to work for a small fee of £500 a month, and rapidly helped to turn the organisation back into profitability. I enjoyed working again in a sporting organisation, but sadly even that organisation changed and it had an uncertain future. Over twenty-five years the regional organisation had raised money by its own efforts, and distributed over £400,000 to many up and coming and hopeful young sportsmen and sportswomen, some of whom have become household names in sport. In September 2000 I resigned from my post as Regional Director, as a stepping stone to retirement. SportsAid is another organisation that did a good job in a small way, with local help of volunteers, for many young people wanting to make their mark in sport, but in the new world of money in sport, I do not think it should or will have much relevance in the future. As one door closes another always opens, and even now that I have retired and reached OAP status, I wonder if there is yet one more career waiting for me around the corner.

Life was about to take another turn in early October 2000. I was feeling good having got back into running three times a week, which I hoped would start to reduce the weight I had put on since going onto insulin. My most recent run had been for forty-five minutes; the longest since I ran London in 1997, and I was looking forward to increasing the training because I felt quite confident I could run for an hour without a problem. I then went off to my six-monthly checkup at the Diabetic Clinic at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. Marion had accompanied me as she always did, and we parked the car at the Park and Ride and took the bus to the hospital. Everything was normal, and I then went in to see the doctor; a new one, as my old friend Dr Hisham Maksoud had moved on. He was not happy with something and sent me to have an immediate ECG. He then called me back in and took my pulse, which was reading around thirty per minute. He was not happy and said he would speak to the specialist at the John Radcliffe Cardiac Unit. After a short while he spoke to Marion and myself again, explaining that he thought I had a serious problem, and that I should go straight to the JR without returning home. I think we were both shocked, but I did ask what was the alternative, and his reply was “possible sudden death”. I decided I had better take his advice and go straight to hospital.

We drove to the JR a short distance away, as his message was still ringing in our ears. I had been given a largish packet containing all my records and a letter, and I reported to the Cardiac Unit. The bed was ready for me, and I was immediately wired up so that they could monitor me at the nurses' station. Then I was attended by doctors and nurses, all asking questions and doing various things to me. I was then fitted up with a tape box to record my every heartbeat, and I looked like a bionic man with patches and wires all over me. At this stage I had been told I was booked in to have a pacemaker fitted the very next morning, so Marion was dispatched to fetch the usual requirements for a hospital stay from home. She returned and stayed a while before leaving me in the hands of the hospital. While she was there they gave me another ECG, and during this, one of the nurses came rushing in to say they had found the blip that had given the concern; they seemed quite excited. After she had left, another doctor came and examined and spoke to me at some length. He did not think I was a desperate case; that was the first bit of good news that day; but said he wanted to consult with a colleague before making a final judgement. He came back and said that he thought I would eventually need a pacemaker, and that as I was on the list, I could have one fitted on the next day as arranged, but he thought there might be some advantage in me going home with my ‘black box' so that they could have a full twenty-four hour recording, which would clearly identify exactly what I would need. He left the choice to me, and looking around the ward at those much more desperate for treatment than me, I decided to go home.

I then tried to ring Marion, but had difficulty in reaching her as she was busy ringing the family to let them know what had happened. I did catch her off the phone, and within the hour I was back home complete with my wires, pad and ‘black box'.

After all the publicity that had recently surrounded the Cardiac Unit at the John Radcliffe, and the press stories about the NHS, I was amazed at the superb and swift way I was dealt with.

Only a couple of weeks later I was back at the “JR” for a checkout; two days before I was to have a pacemaker inserted. I duly arrived at the appointed time of 9:30 a.m., and had various tests to ensure I was OK for the treatment. At about midday I was seeing the final person, a doctor, before going home. Just as we were finishing there was a knock at the door; it was the doctor who was carrying out the surgery of implants that day. “Mr Eldon, I am Dr ... We have a problem. A patient who should be here for his pacemaker today can't make it. Can we do yours today?” “Yes, why not.” I then had to go and tell Marion that I was not going home.

A bed was ready for me, and after being looked at again, and my blood sugars being checked, I was prepared for the insert which was to be done at 2 p.m. For this little procedure there was no trolley or wheelchair to convey me to the theatre. I just walked there and climbed up onto the ‘table'. A few minutes to ‘lay me out' properly and set me up, and then it was “Light. Camera. Action” as the doctor said, and we were off. I could not see what was going on, but could hear everything and was having a conversation with the theatre nurse throughout. We had something in common, she was the partner of a well-known local veteran runner who I knew well. I was shown the pacemaker just before it was put in, and was amazed how small it was; not much larger than a fifty pence piece.

I did get a ride on a trolley from the theatre back to my bed, where I was confined for just two hours, except for a trip to have an X-ray by wheelchair. It was supposed to be bed rest, but there was not much of that, as various people descended on me to carry out various tests.

By 6:30 p.m., Marion was at the hospital, and I was dispatched home to Didcot. The staff at the John Radcliffe had done a very good job, and I was soon back to running again. I was very impressed with the NHS, but felt a little guilty about the speed I had been dealt with, bearing in mind some of the men I had met in hospital waiting for weeks, and not knowing whether their operation could be carried out in time to save their lives.

The pacemaker does its stuff now, and I have a faster and better heart beat, and I can still run; although I am not that happy with my speed or rather lack of speed, and feel that perhaps more long walks and even cycling could be the answer. The trouble is I do not know if my poor running is down to my weight, my pacemaker, the diabetes, or is it old age?

I am very concerned that, like me, many athletes of my generation appear to have developed heart and other medical problems such as diabetes in later life, which has in many cases brought lives to an end well before the “Seventy score years and ten”. If it was more recent generations, then perhaps this could be put down to the misuse of drugs, but as far as I know this is certainly not the case in the generation I am referring to. In my own case, and that of others, the problem starts with the low heart rate that is essential to the distance runner. Training reduces that rate, but in later life it seems the heart gets even slower and irregular, which is where the problem starts. I believe it would make an interesting piece of research for a doctor with an interest in running. Even while I was writing this book deaths were occurring, including the thirty-nine-year-old brother of Steve Cram. I do not want to put people off running, and still believe that keeping physically fit is important, but I do believe that not enough research has been carried out to prevent the problems I have referred to.

I have now been “On the Run” for fifty-four years; that is nearly twice as long as Ronnie Biggs! I have always enjoyed running and I cannot visualize life without it. I have been very lucky having never suffered from injuries that can be associated with the activity. I have found running hard recently, and it is not quite as easy as it was. I do not know if it is the diabetes, the heart, or just old age; probably a combination of all three, but depending on how I feel, I will run up to three times a week for anything from twenty minutes to an hour. I must confess I have taken a few breaks of some weeks in between, but I always have the urge to get back to it. Many people have described running as being like a drug; an addiction; I cannot argue with that. I will ‘keep on running' as the 1960's song said.

Chapter Twenty-Three: My Outlook on Sport Today

As I look back over more than fifty years of being involved with sport, I can see the many changes that have taken place. I have seen the changes in the popularity of different sports, and of course the change from amateur through shamateurism, to virtually full professionalism in most sports today.

In my early days there was no doubt that the big sports were athletics, boxing and cricket, with soccer some way behind. Over the years sports like squash have also had their day. I remember the big upsurge in that sport in the 1970s, and I nearly got involved with others in setting up squash clubs. The sales of squash rackets went up from about two a year to around fifteen a week in one shop, but the popularity did not remain, although the number of people playing did increase considerably from the very low figures prior to the boom. Cricket was hugely popular in the 1940s and 1950s, with the popular stars like Denis Compton and Bill Edrich. Athletics had a terrific following after the war, and I was lucky enough to be part of it. There were the great runners like Sydney Wooderson who were around both before and after the war. I remember seeing another great miler, Bill Nankerville (Bobby Davro's dad). He used to wear very bright purple satin shorts that glistened under floodlights, and I could not wait to get a pair like them. Yes I did, and in fact I had a whole set of different colours. Then of course there was the excitement in the early fifties, as athletes like Roger Bannister, John Landy (Australia) and Wes Santee (USA), chased what was thought at that time to be the ultimate athletic goal; the sub four-minute mile. There was the great Emil Zatopek, who won his three gold medals at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, and set eighteen world records; and later the great Hungarian athletes Tabori, Iharos and others.

The crowds drawn to the sport in those days were huge. The White City had a capacity of around 40,000 seated, but crowds could touch 60,000 with people standing in front of the stands. Even on a Friday night of the AAA's Championships, where there were only two finals, there could be a crowd of 30,000 to 40,000. Of course there was little television coverage of sport, but the radio was well used. Television has increased the number of ‘couch potatoes', but it has been at the expense of genuine supporters attending some sports events. Even small events, like those at agricultural shows, fetes, carnivals and the Paignton Regatta Sports, the Devon Police Sports, the Air Ministry Sports, and the many handicap meetings in the north of England in particular, drew crowds of at least 5,000 people to see a few races run on grass tracks marked out around a cricket field, in those days of the 1950s and early 60s. Even as late as the 1970s some of these special events, like the Reading Gala of Sport, drew 5,000 to 6,000 people to a small stadium.

My sport of athletics has changed from those days of the 1950s and 60s. The fifteen shillings a day; the near enough genuine expenses; the maximum prize value of £7.7s (not money but goods to the value of); the underhand payment of perhaps £10 for a TV appearance; the odd £10 to £20 handed out by a grateful promoter; have all been replaced today with the commercial sponsorship; the £25,000 plus annual lottery grant; prize money; real money for TV appearances, and the chance to travel the world, not just to compete, but to train. But despite all this the sport has been ailing for some time, and the management of it at all levels has been very poor to say the least. It fought to stay as an amateur sport for far too long, and when it did find itself dragged into the professional era, it was slow to react and has still not got it right.

There are other differences, and these are perhaps more important, as they have contributed to the loss of public interest in the sport. In those good years there was a lot of competition, as there were so many good middle and long distance runners that you never knew who would be on top and going to win major races. There was real competition and people raced each other. I have not seen a decent race between our current or recent runners for a very long time. Most are frightened even by their own shadow, and modest performances give them a reasonable income. There are so few potentially good runners, and I think the present financial structure makes it harder for new talent to challenge the established runners. We do have sprinting talent, but how long does a 100 metres last; less than ten seconds; and is not therefore a great pull with spectators. The interesting events have to be from 800 metres upwards, and until we develop the talent in those areas, we will not draw the crowds or TV audiences back to the sport. I have always said that the way to encourage is not by handouts to the few, but by a sensible prize structure at all levels, so that if an up-and-coming beats an established star, he or she gets the big payday. This would then start them on the learning curve, and give them money to train and travel properly.

As I am writing this book, there is a lot of discussion about cutting down on the number of false starts allowed to only one, and reducing the number of throws and jumps down from six to three, to improve the excitement on television. I believe there is some merit in these proposals, as in most sports you only get one chance; there is no opportunity to have a rerun or second chance to win. I am not quite so sure about the one false start though, because I once did a false start in the Polytechnic Marathon that started in Windsor Castle and ran to Chiswick. Under the new proposed rules I would have been out!

There have been other missed opportunities for the sport, like the mass running boom of the late 70s and early 80s, which could have helped to fund the sport if properly handled. It has been content to rely on the goodwill and free services of a very aging and disappearing stock of athletics officials. While attending an athletic event in the last couple of years, I heard a conversation between some of these aging officials. The gist of it was that one day athletes would turn up to run in a meeting, and there would be no officials present because they would all have passed on.

Athletics is a complex sport; in fact it is a compendium of different sports. There are three main activities; cross-country, road running, and track and field, and the latter is the main problem, as it is not a single activity. There are all the different running events, as well as the throws and the jumps. All different disciplines demanding their own specialisation and specialist coaching. There are many in traditional clubs who criticise the setting up in recent years of the new road running specialist clubs. They think they have helped to destroy the long standing clubs, but I do not think this is true. In fact these single purpose clubs have probably helped to keep the sport going through the difficult years. In fact the way forward may be to have more, not less, specialist clubs. The way athletics is going now, there will be an elite set of clubs at the top level and other clubs, including some long-established clubs, will have to rethink their policy and structure to survive. The traditional club in most towns may have to be the feeder club for the top twenty clubs, which will mean strong junior and younger teams, but weaker senior sections. These clubs may have to depend on the veteran athletes that already make a valuable contribution to many clubs. With the problems in many parts of the country with running on public roads, I think that the number of road races will drop, and the sport will largely revert back to track and field and cross-country running. Maybe in the long term this will be good for the sport, and we will start to produce more and better track runners, especially in the distance events.

There are still hundreds of road running events around the country, but it is not just the standard of the runners that is declining, but the standard of race organisation. Many events have gone back to the ‘bad old days' as far as organisation is concerned, with little imagination and just one thing in mind, to take as much money as possible off the runners, without giving a well-organised and professional event. Many events still do not know how to produce quick and accurate results; they have commentators who know nothing about the event, running or the runners; and the prize structure of these events is sometimes worse than fifty years ago. There are of course people around who do all these jobs very well, but there are far too many ‘Micky Mouse' events run for the wrong purpose. What other sport allows all and sundry to organise a sporting event outside of that sport as long as the ‘thirty pieces of silver' are handed over?

Athletics has been very slow as a sport to integrate the disabled into its events at all levels, although hopefully that is slowly being put right, but it is very slowly and I have heard all the excuses as to why clubs and others cannot take on this extra responsibility.

Today the major sport is football, which I am pleased to say has been integrating the disabled, but for how long will they remain the top sport? I believe that there will be further changes, and support will increase for other sports as people get bored with watching twenty-two men kick a round ball around a pitch. The football machine is huge, but it can and will come to a grinding halt; perhaps in five years or less. I believe that football supporters will come to their senses and stop paying the high price to watch their sport, and the high price of all the proliferates such as replica shirts. The ‘powers that be' in the sport will also realise that they cannot keep adding more and more competitions into the already crowded calendar. Anyone who knows anything about fitness and the human body, knows that you cannot keep putting physical demands on the body week in, week out, especially with a contact sport.

What will take over where football leaves off? I hope that athletics makes a big comeback, but it is more likely that rugby will lead the way in the next few years. I believe that football can have a major role to play in helping other sports. Athletics struggles for money and a professional approach, and what a great contribution a club like Manchester United could make if they took over a Manchester Athletic Club, and had it as part of its big machine. Initially there would be a cost; perhaps one million pounds a year to get athletics onto a professional footing, but once set up, there would be great prestige and further income for the owning club. Sports clubs in other parts of the world are often multi-sport, and I believe this country could follow this example.

My hints earlier in this book might suggest that I am against modern professional sport, but I am not. I have always lived in the real world, and the days of the total amateur and shamateurism had to disappear at the top level. What I have a quarrel with, is the excesses of modern professional sport and the inequality of it. There is no need for footballers to be paid their £40 or £50,000 a week, and cricketers at the top level earning two per cent of that. There used to be a top wage in soccer of £20 a week; the time may be coming when they have to reintroduce a maximum wage, although a little higher than that £20 per week! I think it should be remembered what the definition of sport is “a source of diversion or recreation, a pastime, a physical activity engaged in for recreation”. In other words sport is for fun and wellbeing.

I do not like the modern presentation of sport on TV. It should be about watching the action, and not be preceded by or followed by a load of waffle from so-called experts who are often not that expert, even if they have succeeded in their chosen sport. Perhaps the definition of expert sums this up.
‘Ex'
needs no explanation, it means in any context ‘past it';
‘Spurt'
(spert) is a drip of water under pressure.
So by definition an
‘expert'
is a little drip under pressure,
who is past it
.
Keep them off our screens and let us get back to good professional commentators, if they can be found.
The problem is probably caused by the ‘experts' being paid so much that they have an inflated ego and want to have their face as well as their voice on the programme
.
The good commentators like, David Coleman and Ron Pickering, were in the main heard but not seen.

The funding of sport in various ways through the National Lottery Sports Fund, has made a tremendous difference to many sports and the individuals in those sports. The successes at the Sydney Olympics and Paralympics in 2000, is testimony to that. But there has also been a huge wasting of that precious resource by those who control it. Governments have made reports, set up committees and reviews, but have never really grasped the problems of sport in this country; which is that we have too many controlling bodies, and more than any other country, we promote every activity from kite flying to tiddlywinks, to sport status eventually.

I believe, and always have, that there needs to be a new body to replace that organisation that is supposed to be the voice of sport; what was the Sports Council, now Sport England and Sport UK. The only thing that it has ever been good at is producing masses of printed paper; most of which is never read. It has been allowed to grow like ‘topsy' and has only ever been tweaked. It has never been seriously reviewed. I have worked closely with individuals within that organisation, and most of them do a great job within the structure, but any government that really wants to get to grips with sport and its management, would not just revamp this body but scrap it and start again. The best and most useful campaign run by them was the Sport for All, which was in my opinion what their work should really have been about, not concentrating on increasing sport participation by ethnic groups, women and other minorities. Their old slogan Sport for All covered all these groups.

Why do I think they should be scrapped? It is because they have been so wasteful of the resources given to them, and so much money has gone on so-called restructuring various bodies involved with sport and the management of sport. I think they have suffered too much from government interference and the whims of sports ministers. A post that is not treated seriously by prime ministers as was obvious when the best minister of sport for years, Kate Hoey, was sacked last year. In fact I wonder if there is really any need to have a so-called minister of sport at all. Sport is probably best left to those who know, appreciate and understand it.