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To believe this story, you must believe that the human race can be one joyous family, working together, laughing together, achieving the impossible.
Chris Brasher, the founder of the London Marathon, Olympic Gold Medallist, and pace-maker in the first four-minute mile, has died. His achievements, almost uniquely, grew more impressive as he got older.
Most potted biographies present Brasher as a determined duffer who fell in with the right crowd and had one almost miraculous stroke of luck on the track and another in business, but he was rather more than that, though there is something to the 'duffer' myth. He was a reserve for the 1953 expedition which conquered Everest, and he was the third man in the 1956 Olympic steeplechase team.
Brasher was born in 1928, and by 1950 — when he was 22 — he had led two climbing expeditions to the arctic. In 1951, he won the 5000m and was second in the 1500m in the World Student Games. In 1952, he finished 11th in the Olympic steeplechase. In 1954, along with Chris Chattaway, he helped Roger Bannister run the mile in under four minutes, a feat he considered made him all the more determined to succeed on his own terms. He gave up smoking and climbing, and concentrated on the track. He won the Olympic steeplechase in 1956* — though initially disqualified for allegedly obstructing third placer Ernst Larsen by spreading his arms when clearing a barrier — becoming the first Briton to win an athletics gold in 20 years* and the only one to win that year. Between his reinstatement as the official winner, and the presentation ceremony, he celebrated with the British press corps, and received his medal "totally blotto." He returned to the UK and to his full-time careers at the Observer and later at the BBC. (Sources 1, 2.)
He founded "Chris Brasher's Sporting Emporium", in 1970, which was soon renamed Sweatshop. As if that wasn't enough, he conceived and developed the Brasher Boot, which became the most popular light walking boot in the UK.
He ran the New York Marathon in 1979, and wrote about it in the Observer. His article concluded, rhetorically: I wonder whether London could stage such a festival? We have the course, a magnificent course… but do we have the heart and hospitality to welcome the world? He was already wondering how to do it. With Donald Trelford, the Observer editor, Brasher met the AAA, GLC, and the police, and by promising never to ask for help from the ratepayers, obtained their consent for the first London Marathon.
Brasher drew up six objectives for the race:
Winners Dick Beardsley and Inge Simonsen finished in a dead heat, symbolically holding hands (and granting photographers an instant symbol for the second objective), and Joyce Smith broke the women's UK record (meeting the first one). (Source.)
The BBC was first out of the traps with three obituaries: Farewell to a visionary, Racing mourns owner Brasher, and Marathon founder Brasher dies.
*Impressive, but don't forget that 20 years usually means four intervening championhips: if you win any Olympic medal, you will be the first person for four years, and the Olympics were not held in 1940 and 1944, so he was the first medallist after two fallow meetings, and those were in the post-war years of rationing.
Last updated 26 December 2005
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