The ‘Miracle Mile’ that almost killed a runner
IT was dubbed “the Miracle Mile”. But by the end of the marathon, a world record holder had wilted in the extreme heat and collapsed — within sight of the finish line — after covering a gruelling 27 miles.
THE Commonwealth Games can’t match the Olympics for scandal, controversy and sensation. But over the decades the tournament of the nations that Britain found, conquered and colonised has given it a good shot — and is still doing so.
The Commonwealth Games: The good, the bad and the ugly
On a spring day at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games in 1982 an Australian sporting legend was born when a moustachioed Rob (Deek) de Castella pulled off one of the great marathon triumphs.
Deek, who announced his arrival with a world best time in winning the 1981 Fukuoka Marathon, went on to take out World Championship gold in 1983.
But it was his battle with two Tanzanian runners through the streets of Brisbane that Australians will remember forever.
De Castella said the moment was one of his “great memories” from a career that included four Olympic Games and three top 10 finishes but no medal.
The greatest race
Four decades on it is still considered the greatest championship 1500m race ever run.
The 1974 Games in Christchurch pitted sensational Tanzanian frontrunner against his great rival and friend New Zealand middle distance champion John Walker.
Leading from the front in a tactic that appeared to defy the odds, Filbert Bayi knocked almost a second off of American Jim Ryun’s seven-year-old world record, followed closely home, also under the old mark, by Walker in front of his home crowd.
Bayi came home in 3:32.16 in a race that took middle distance competition into a new era.
At the halfway point Bayi was 12 metres clear but on the last lap the pack, led by New Zealand’s Rod Dixon and John Walker, began to close on him. Walker passed Dixon on the curve and was within two metres of the leader. In shades of John Landy against Roger Bannister, Bayi looked over his shoulder, but the difference this time he was the one to accelerate away. Brendan Foster set a new British record yet finished only seventh.
The greatest race (again)
It was dubbed the “Miracle Mile”, Roger Bannister of England against Australia’s John Landy — the only two sub-four-minute milers in history at the time — running against each other at a major championship at Vancouver in 1954.
Landy led by eight yards at one stage but as he turned into the home straight the roar of the crowd prevented him from hearing his pursuer and he peeked over his left shoulder to find Bannister.
But Bannister launched his attack and swept past Landy on his right shoulder to go onto victory. Both runners broke four minutes, the first time it had happened in the same race.
“The last lap was one of most intense and exciting moments of my life,” Bannister wrote later in his autobiography.
“Landy had shown me what a race could really be at its greatest.”
The collapse
The drama of Banister’s victory had hardly subsided when the stumbling, shambolic figure of Jim Peters entered the stadium at the end of the marathon in Vancouver.
The world record holder had driven himself relentlessly in the heat and had continued to push even when at one stage his lead reached more than three miles. He collapsed within sight of the finish a dozen times before finally falling into the arms of the English team masseur 200 yards short of the line.
He had not, it subsequently transpired, been beaten by the marathon distance. The course was found to be 27 miles long. Peters had, with the cruellest of ironies, actually covered the standard 26 miles 385 yards before he wilted.
He never raced again.
COMM GAMES COVERAGE:
• Sydney Kings Brad Newley chasing back-to-back Commonwealth Games gold
• Cameron McEvoy gets a big confidence boost ahead of Games
• How Michelle Jenneke handled the haters
New Delhi woes
A collapsed bridge, rooms “unfit for habitation” and top athletes pulling out threatened to sink the 2010 Commonwealth Games before they began.
The Games were also beset by serious corruption by officials of the organising committee, delays in the construction of main Games’ venues, infrastructural compromise, possibility of a terrorist attack and exceptionally poor ticket sales before the event.
Jessica Peris
Australian athletics has been rocked by a drugs scandal in which the daughter of Olympic gold medallist and former senator Nova Peris is alleged to have tested positive to a banned substance.
Sprinter Jessica Peris was forced to withdraw from the Games selection trials on the Gold Coast after a banned substance was detected in a sample taken by the Australian Sports Anti-doping Authority (ASADA).
Peris, 27, had been on track to follow in her famous mother’s footsteps after clocking a series of personal bests.
The athlete has strongly denied doping, claiming there are “substantial flaws” with the test and vowing to the fight the result.
“I did not take any performance-enhancing substance,” Peris said in a statement.
Dead heat
At Brisbane in 1982 Allan Wells, the reigning Olympic 100m champion, had already won the shorter sprint in a wind assisted 10.02 and was expected to take out the 200m title.
But the Scot had not counted on young English sprinter Mike McFarlane. He and Wells matched each other stride-for-stride during the race and when they dipped at the finish line to the naked eye it was impossible to tell who won.
Many minutes passed before officials announced that they had studied the automatic photo-finish film and there was not an inch between the two.
It was the first — and remains only — time a dead-heat for a gold medal had been declared in a major championships.
Madam Butterfly
She was known as Madam Butterfly but long before that she was just a small girl with a scrapbook and big dreams. At the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Susie O’Neill set the individual record of six gold medals at one Games.
Ian Thorpe equalled the record four years later but it remained unbroken as was O’Neill’s record of 10 Commonwealth Games golds — a mark she shares with Thorpe and Leisel Jones.
When O’Neill thinks of her Malaysian gold rush her mind drifts back to when she was a nine-year-old schoolgirl and the Commonwealth Games came to her home city, Brisbane.
“The 1982 Commonwealth Games had a massive impact on me. I kept newspaper cuttings of that Games for years. It really inspired me,” she said.
By the 1998 Games, O’Neill was an Olympic gold medallist in the prime of her career. She swept five gold medals in the pool — three relays, the 400m freestyle and the 200m butterfly — with the record breaking sixth coming in the 200m freestyle.
MORE COMM GAMES COVERAGE:
• Aussie swimmers go for hometown domination
• Aussies not concerned by lack of fast trial times
• Pearson bombs at world champs
Arthur Tunstall
The 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Canada was the scene of a major stoush involving 400m runner Cathy Freeman and the domineering, old school chef de mission of the Australian team, Arthur Tunstall.
Tunstall — known as “King Arthur” in Games circles because of his bullying approach — clashed with Freeman after she carried both the Australian and Aboriginal flags on her gold medal victory lap.
He ordered the Australian Athletics team officials to inform Freeman not to display the Aboriginal flag in future events. If she repeated her celebration with an indigenous flag, she would be sent home.
But his reprimand of one of Australia’s greatest athletes angered even his closest allies and six years later Freeman was chosen to light the flame at the Sydney Olympics before going on to win 400m gold in one of Australian sport’s most memorable moments.
But neither the veteran Games boss nor Freeman held a grudge and several years after Victoria they convivially appeared in an advertisement.
Tunstall died in February 2016, aged 93.
Beached Wales
There was much singing in the Valleys when two weightlifters from Wales jerked and snatched their way to victory in Auckland 1990.
But the celebrations were short-lived. Drug tests revealed the boyos returned positive tests for anabolic steroids.
Banished from the Games and stripped of their medals, the duo’s misery was compounded by the fact they were sent home in disgrace to Wales.
The two Welshmen’s behaviour put all of Britain’s weightlifters on the brink of international disqualification.
A wealth of nations
Maria Mutola is a legend of modern athletics.
In addition to numerous World and Olympic titles, the girl from Mozambique won Commonwealth Games 800m gold in both 1998 and 2002.
But Mozambique wasn’t even a part of the original Commonwealth. The former Portuguese colony was only cleared to compete in the games in 1995.
Even more bizarre are claims that Cambodia was once keen to join the Commonwealth.
Transgender weightlifter
Australia has called for a champion transgender woman weightlifter to be banned from the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games because she has an unfair advantage over female rivals.
Australian Weightlifting Federation CEO Michael Keelan fired off a protest letter to Games officials after New Zealander Laurel Hubbard — formerly a successful male weightlifter named Gavin — was granted permission to compete in the women’s event.
Hubbard, 39, is the first trans to represent New Zealand after cleared by the International Olympic Committee and International Weightlifting Federation to compete against other female lifters in the 200lb (90kg) class.
Hubbard, 39, who began transitioning four years ago, upset some fellow competitors after winning a silver medal in the women’s 90kg-plus division at the world championships and gold at an international event in Melbourne in 2017.
As a male weightlifter in 1998, Hubbard was a New Zealand national junior record holder in the 105kg division.
Officials have ruled Hubbard has met international guidelines after undergoing at least 12 months of hormone therapy and recording low levels of testosterone in tests.
Rugby Sevens
Rugby Sevens was a huge hit when it was introduced in Kuala Lumpur in 1998. The sight of rugby legends David Campese and Jonah Lomu brought prestige to an event whose inclusion had been criticised in some quarters.
No player was more impressive than Lomu who inspired the All Blacks to qualify easily for the final and then to beat Fiji 21-12 in a classic final.
“I’ve played all over the world and in some of the sport’s biggest games but the Commonwealth Games will always be among my greatest memories,” Lomu said later.
The great winger died on November 18, 2015 after a long battle with a serious kidney disorder.
Thorpie
Australians dominated in the pool at Kuala Lumpur in 1998 but it was the youngest member of the team who made the biggest impression.
At just 15 Ian Thorpe won four gold medals in the 200m and 400m freestyle and was in two gold-medal relay teams.
It led veteran Australian coach Don Talbot to say, “You can’t believe he’s 15. It’s genetics gone bloody crazy!”
After the ‘98 Games, Thorpe went on to become a swimming legend.
READ MORE:
LIZARD LOVE: Swimming star’s bizarre obsession
B GOOD: Aussie content with lower time standard
Dawn
Dawn Fraser is arguably the greatest female swimmer in history. She was the first woman to swim 100m freestyle in under one minute.
At Perth in 1962 Fraser won four gold medals in the 110yds freestyle, 440yds freestyle, 4x110yds freestyle relay and the 4x110yds medley relay.
She had also competed in Cardiff in 1958 where she won gold in the 110yds freestyle and the 4x110yds freestyle relay and silver medals in both the 440yds freestyle and the 4x110yds medley relay team.
During her career she also held 39 world records and won eight Olympic medals.
Originally published as The ‘Miracle Mile’ that almost killed a runner
60-year-first as medals for scaled-back Games confirmed
The Commonwealth Games had to be scaled back to survive, but there will still be loads of gold medals on offer for Australians.
Big change to Comm Games after snub
The almost death of the Commonwealth Games prompted a significant change that officials believe will take the event beyond its 100th year.
Chief declares Commonwealth Games will live on
Australia’s Commonwealth Games head is confident the event will survive a reduced program in 2026 missing several key sports.