The Way Forward

Shortly Before He Died This Month, Gordon Surtees Sent Aw His Thoughts On British Endurance Running

- Gordon Surtees

I FELL in love with athletics as a youngster and I am becoming increasingly concerned about its well-being. Additionally, I believe the envisaged problems of the future actually took root during the years of involvement by my generation and therefore there is a feeling of guilt.

For many years cross country has been regarded as the foundation of endurance events and almost all our top endurance athletes, whether 800m or marathon runners, have featured prominently in cross country at some stage of their development. The only real exceptions are those athletes who stepped up from 400m to 800m.

Therefore examining the winter season might be a good starting point to discover what is going amiss, the likely cause and a possible solution to the problem.

The highpoint of any season should be the world or European championships for those gaining selection, but for the majority of athletes it should be the national championships and the Inter-Counties.

The latter event provides the opportunity for the better class runners from the individual domestic countries to compete against each other in a meaningful competition. Sadly, the recent main domestic events cannot compare with past standards.

The events themselves are excellent with real cross country courses, tough and demanding and the huge number of participants are ably managed by, undoubtedly, the best officials in the world. Why then do we have reason to be pessimistic?

In the past the Inter-Counties was sometimes referred to as the Nationals without the stragglers. Athletes fought to represent their county and it enabled teams like Yorkshire to revive the War of the Roses with Lancashire and any other county that picked up the gauntlet. Yet lately some of these counties have struggled to field a full strength team.