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INSPIRATIONAL WALTER GEORGE

Author: Rob Hadgraft

From sickly child to sporting hero

By Rob Hadgraft

WALTER GEORGE was the sickly child who grew up to become the greatest runner the world had ever seen.

For the last quarter of the 19th century, Englishman Walter’s best times at a range of distances proved virtually unbeatable. It was only in the early years of the 20th century - 25 years after Walter took up running - that fellow-countryman Alf Shrubb came along and began creating new world record times. 

Plagued by childhood illnesses, Walter George emerged from a rural English backwater to transform himself into a most unlikely sporting hero. And not only was lanky Walter the quickest man of his era over a range of distances, he lived fast too!

His self-confessed weaknesses were ‘a beer, a cigar and a spree’ and he was known to gamble heavily. But Walter lived in the late 19th century and as the world’s first official amateur champion he had no role models to emulate or coaching manuals to guide him. As a result, some of his escapades simply beggar belief.

A typical episode involved a drunken midnight race under the gas lamps along London’s Regent Street with pals. Ignoring a London bobby’s advice to behave himself and get home to bed, George then trekked though the night to meet a lady-friend. This was followed by a hectic morning’s shopping and lavish lunch in the West End before our hero bowled merrily into the Lillie Bridge stadium to casually smash a world record!

Despite his apparently carefree lifestyle, there was a serious side to George, whose innovative training included a zen-like exercise programme he called ‘100-up’, and lengthy sessions soaking in brine baths. As a raw youngster George carefully planned how he’d break the world mile record by a huge margin. His friends laughed him out of the clubhouse when they saw the details in his notebook. A few years later he shocked the sporting world by achieving this target to the second. The record would stand for 29 years - a unique achievement in athletics history.

Told for the first time, the story of this remarkable athletics pioneer is published in a new book I completed writing in the summer of 2006. It is a follow-up to my biography of Alf Shrubb (The Little Wonder, Desert Island Books), which came out in 2004.

‘BEER AND BRINE:
THE MAKING OF WALTER GEORGE,
ATHLETICS’ FIRST SUPERSTAR’
By Rob Hadgraft (Desert Island Books, 2006)
256 pages, illustrated, ISBN 1-905328-20-6, £18.99

Order via any good bookshop, or via Amazon, or http://www.desertislandbooks.com

In his day Walter George was the talk of the land - arguably the sporting world’s very first superstar. Even in 1887 he was forced to get married in secret to dodge fans and admirers. He won 12 AAA titles and two English cross-country championships. He smashed a whole series of world records.

He became a true national institution, and the original lovable rogue of sport. He hailed from rural Wiltshire, but made his name in the Midlands. He ran for Mosley harriers, Blackheath harriers and the Worcester club he helped set up. In 1882 he won the so-called ‘championship of the world’ when he travelled to New York and beat the legendary Lon Myers in a ‘best of three’ series of races at the New York Polo Grounds in Manhattan.

His most famous race came in August 1886 when he smashed the world mile record at Lillie Bridge in London, and set a new time that would open the way for subsequent generations to chase that elusive dream - the four-minute mile. He ran 4mins.12.75 secs, a time so good that the ‘experts’ who witnessed it said it was a miracle and would never be surpassed!  It would in fact be an amazing 29 years before it was beaten, although this new record wasn’t universally recognised as artificial pace-making was involved. The first time Walter’s 1886 record was beaten in a genuine race was 37 years later, courtesy of the Scandinavian miler Paavo Nurmi. By this time Walter was an old man!

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