our gifts, he leant over and said'you pair ofbas-

tards knew which places to run, didnt you!'

What was your favourite distance?It came back to be one mile, actually. The

glamour events were the hundred yards, and

the mile. I was running 3 and 6 miles then, and

I thought'hang on, if I win the 6 mile no one

cares!' So the philosophy was 'why run 24 laps

when you can run 4?' So I came back to the mile,

and had a lot of success at that. But to run a good

mi1e, you had to be able to run a good 2 or 3

mile - you had to be able to go up and down the

ladder. I ran a2.29 marathon the same year I ran

a sub 4 milel

Despite being a strong miler' withfour sub 4 minute miles and fournational titles, your best results(world records, championshipsuecessesl came over the 2 and 3mile distances. Why was that?

Having a good mile gave me the speed to run

2 and 3 miles! Look at the speed ofthe 3000m and

5000m runners now. You better believe it's fast.

tUhat was your proudest result?I was very proud of the Melbourne Ollnnpics. I

won the heat, and then got 5th in the final. There's

only three ofus who have done that, and nobody

has placed better than 5th.

What was it like to race Herb Elliot?You knew you were going to get mn overl

5o who didyou have the mostbattles with in competition?

I had lots of battles with Power and Lawrence,

because every race around here in Sydney you'd

cop them, and then meet them again at the State

Championships, and then you would go for the

Australian Championshlps, and you'd face them

there tool Because at that stage NSW held the

mantle for distance running. It used to be always

Victoria, but all of a sudden we took it off them!

For a lew years. Now, it's Vicloria again.

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What's it like runningon cinders?

It can be pretty shocking. For exam-

p1e at the old MooreParktrack(where

the current ES Mall<s track is in Sydney)

in dry weather it would just chew uP,

and you would be running round in

sand. The inside lane would be so

bad you would have to rtur wide. If it

rained, you got covered from head to

, toe in black stuff

; Ilgere the crowds big forr, meets in those days?, If you went down to Melbournei when Clarke or Landy was running,

' itwouldbe unbelievable. Packed

, out. There was a huge interest

r whenever Landywas goingto race., And when Clarke came along,

' you were lucky to get a ticket in!

Because everyone knew that when--

ever he stepped onto the track, he

was going to do something. .l:,1

54 RUN FOR YOUR LIFE APRIL-MAY 2OO8