V 11 N. 72 Tim Johnston, British Marathoner, 8th at Mexico City R.I.P.

                                                                                     ( photo from Athletics Weekly by Mark Shearman

 I learned today that the British runner Tim Johnston passed away  October 8, 2021 in The Hague. His funeral service will be in Cambridge on Nov. 9.  

I first corresponded with Tim when he contacted me about information for a book he was writing about Otto Peltzer the great German 800/1500 runner of the 1930's.  Unfortunately I was not able to contribute much but he still recognized my efforts in the credits in the book "His Own Man, the Biography of Otto Peltzer".  It was co-authored with  Don Macgregor, also deceased.   

Tim Johnston as noted in the article below, once held the British 6 miles record and the World Record for 30,000 meters on a track.   He was especially strong in cross country and often went head to head with the best in the mid 1960s.

Several references to his work have been posted earlier in this blog.  Here are the links.

 Once Upon a Time in the Vest    first article 

Once Upon a Time in the Vest      second Peltzer article,  be warned, this one is long.

A note I received from Tim Johnston explaining to me the importance of the British Inter Counties meet.

Dear George, you have indeed found a treasure.

The Inter-Counties Athletic Champs, incorporating the British Games, was traditionally the major opening meet of the of the British track season, second only in importance to the AAA Champs. It was held at the White City stadium in west London on the last weekend in May. Each English County was entitled to send 1 competitor per event. In addition, there were special invitation events, to which leading foreign athletes were often invited. The meet was sponsored  by the News of the World (aka as the News of the Screws), the best-selling British Sunday newspaper, which specialised in detailed reports of sex cases, expecially rapes and sensational divorces.

Talk to John Cobley and Bob Phillips of Racing Past, if you want know more - both about the history of the meet, and about the connection with the News of the World - recently closed down in scandalous circumstances by the owner, the Australian publishing multi-millionaire, Rupert Murdoch.

Best,

Tim Johnston

Here is one of the last emails I received from Tim a couple of years ago.  He refers to the find of pictures from Tokyo 1964 that were found in a dumpster.

Hi George - Some interesting finds in that dumpster. The pic showing Anne Smith, Gordon Pirie, Gammoudi and Mimoun is a real find. Gordon's 'role' at Tokyo was as Anne's coach and mentor. 

Like most athletes of my generation, I knew and admired Gordon, although he wasn't the easiest of people to get on with, and I was his junior by 10 years. After the disappointment of Rome, he turned professional. As I recall, one of his first races was multiple laps of a Spanish bull-ring against a team of local runners running in relays. The 'race' involved heavy betting.

After he'd taken up with Anne Smith, they travelled the world together. Anne was still competitive on the track; Gordon picked up what he could from coaching and lecturing. At one point they were said to be living together in a tent in New Zealand.

In 1966, I spent a few days with Gordon at Bosön, the Swedish National Training Centre and incidentally the site of the famous Lidingö 30 km x-country race, which I won that year. Gordon had totally changed his views on training. Multiple fast intervals had been replaced by flat-out continuous runs, the faster the better. 

The next time I met Gordon was in early 1969, when he'd been hired as technical adviser by Michael Winner, the film director. The Games, about a future Olympics. A real turkey, think it went straight to video. Many of us figured in it as extras and advisers. Winner was really mean to Gordon, cos he thought he'd been fooled into overpaying him.

Never saw Gordon again. News of his painful, premature death from cancer came as a shock, but the funeral was a tremendous gathering of several generations of runners.

Keep up the good work.

Best,

Tim 

Later in talking about the making of that film  "The Games"  I had asked Tim  about whether the French singer  Charles Aznovour who played a Zatopek-like character could run.  Tim said absolutely not.  In a shot taken of Aznovour running with a group,  Tim was in that shot and guys on both sides of Aznovour were carrying him to hopefully look like he was running.  

Sports Reference when it still functioned  gave this bio of Tim Johnston

Tim Johnston

Full name: Timothy Frederick Kemball "Tim" Johnston
Gender: Male
Height: 5-8.5 (175 cm)
Weight: 134 lbs (61 kg)
Born: March 11, 1941 (Age 75.267, YY.DDD) in Oxford, Oxfordshire, Great Britain
Affiliations: Portsmouth AC, Portsmouth (GBR)
Country:  Great Britain
Sport: Athletics

Biography

Personal Best: Mar – 2-15:26 (1968).

Results

 

Glossary  · SHARE  · Embed  · CSV  · Export  · PRE  · LINK  · ?

Games	Age	City	Sport	Event	Team	NOC	Rank	Medal
1968 Summer	27	Ciudad de México	Athletics	Men's Marathon	Great Britain	GBR	8

Men's Marathon

 

Event History  · Glossary  · SHARE  · Embed  · CSV  · Export  · PRE  · LINK  · ?

Games	Age	City	Sport	Country	Phase	Unit	Rank		T
1968 Summer	27	Ciudad de México	Athletics	Great Britain	Final Standings		8		2-28:04.4

Tim Johnston, GB distance star of the 1960s, dies

Posted by Athletics Weekly | Oct 13, 2021 |

Portsmouth AC and Cambridge University athlete represented Britain in the Olympic marathon in Mexico and won the Inter-Counties cross-country title twice

Tim Johnston, an Olympic marathon runner for Britain in the 1968 Olympics, has died aged 80.

Best known for racing in Cambridge University and Portsmouth AC colours during his career, Johnston set a British record of 27:22.2 for six miles in 1964 and world record of 92:34.6 for 30,000m on the track in 1965.

On the countryside , meanwhile, he won the Inter-Counties crown in 1963 and 1965, the Southern title in 1963, 1966 and 1969 and competed five times in the International Championships – the forerunner to the world cross-country championships – with a best place of second, to Gaston Roelants of Belgium, in 1967.

At Olympic level he won the British marathon trials for Mexico in 1968 but despite spending some of the previous year acclimatising for the altitude, he struggled in the thin air with a stitch and finished eighth in a race won by Mamo Wolde of Ethiopia as Johnston’s team-mate Bill Adcocks was fifth.

Tim Johnston (Mark Shearman)

Elsewhere he was a fine steeplechaser with a best of 8:53.6 and despite Achilles problems ending his senior athletics career, he went on to win European and world masters titles.

Outside athletics he trained as a solicitor and taught English in addition to enjoying a spell as a lawyer-linguist in Brussels.