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Athletics

It’s all in the mind – or is it?

For someone who played a lot of sport in my youth, albeit in a ‘keen but averagedly talented’ fashion, I reckon I’m in reasonable shape. I’ve had the occasional twinge over the years – e.g. two broken matatarsals in my feet (one retaining its metal pin some four [...]

July 17, 2016 // 0 Comments

The right stuff

Hats off today to Valerie Adams, New Zealand’s double Olympic gold medallist shot putt champion, for her uncompromising black and white attitude towards sportsmen and women who cheat by using performance-enhancing drugs. See here – article by Donald McCrae that appears today on the [...]

July 5, 2016 // 0 Comments

It all comes to this in the end

Yesterday I sent an email to my brother, five and a half years my junior, about our theoretical plans for playing golf this year and was slightly taken aback when he replied saying that he hadn’t been enjoying the game for some time and had decided to stop playing it – well, save for making a [...]

February 6, 2016 // 0 Comments

Berlin 36

The 1936 Berlin Olympiad is rightly remembered for the feats of Jesse Owens who so embarrassed Hitler that he walked out of the stadium. There was another lesser known story of racial prejudice and  confused, indeed contrived gender, recorded in the 2010 film Berlin 36. I saw the film on Netflix [...]

January 16, 2016 // 0 Comments

Weekend press

There’s only one traditional and absolute rule in Rust-land, which is that there are no rules, instructions or boundaries – well, apart from those we impose upon ourselves. I’m pretty sure – though not 100% certain because none of this has ever been explained to me, indeed [...]

September 13, 2015 // 0 Comments

Auction at Christies

Yesterday I attended for the first time an auction which was at Christies for the sale of the shoes in which Roger Bannister ran the first sub 4 minute mile at Iffley Road on May 6th 1954  . I am not that familiar with the sports memorabilia world either so I prepped with Alice Mansfield on [...]

September 11, 2015 // 0 Comments

A sad day for sport and justice

My reaction yesterday to the news that long distance runner Paula Radcliffe had issued a four-page statement acknowledging that she had been the ‘household name’ British athlete mentioned in the series of exposures begin last month by The Sunday Times (in conjunction with the German broadcaster [...]

September 9, 2015 // 0 Comments

The test of time

Firstly let me begin by saying how delighted and honoured I feel to be chosen as the National  Rust‘s athletic correspondent. I know Grania from the Thames Valley Harriers and through her met Polly, a keen amateur runner, and then Bob Tickler. At one of his parties I met some of the Rust [...]

August 11, 2015 // 2 Comments

Sir Roger Bannister : a legend and thoughtful man

A month or so ago I wrote to Sir Roger Bannister as my uncle Paul had passed away and was at Exeter  College Oxford at the same time as Sir Roger. He wrote back by return of post saying he remembered my uncle as a spirited member of college. When I spoke of this to family and friends there was [...]

August 8, 2015 // 0 Comments

The art of opening a can of worms

Congratulations are due to The Sunday Times for its revelations at the weekend about the widespread degree of performance-enhancing drug-taking within elite athletics (or ‘track and field’ as our American cousins style it). According the allegations, set out over several pages in the edition of [...]

August 3, 2015 // 0 Comments

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