The
Kid Who Became a National Treasure
Book
Review
A
Runner’s Journey
By
Bruce Kidd
University
of Toronto Press
424
pages, $l9.47 (publisher)
A
thin haze hugged the Chicago Stadium ceiling, a contribution from careless
smokers. Below, the two milers circled, lap after lap, while the organist above
pulled out all the stops. They were premier international runners, the best
collegians, and a kid.
From
the time I discovered him in Track and Field News and watched his stomping
on the Stadium’s eleven-lap timber in the l964 Chicago Daily News Relays, I was
drawn to Bruce Kidd. He looked like a
ballet apprentice among principal dancers scrupulously following company
choreography.
And,
who could not be amused by the onomatopoeic name.
Now,
Bruce Kidd has written a memoir—he rejects calling it an autobiography--which
covers a remarkable life. The book, A
Runner’s Journey, is much more than a running career recap. Fully two-thirds of the text covers his
professional career as activist and academician, after the athletic curtain
descended. Journey is capably written, free of academic jargon. The
author’s humanism and social justice intensity lift from the page. Thirty-two
photos and illustrations bring memories and people to life.
Today,
at 78, Bruce Kidd is still a Canadian national treasure.
The
Ontario athlete was an Olympian, set 15 Canadian records and won 18 national
championships. He also took two American indoor titles and is the only Canadian
distance runner to reach the top three in Track and Field News’ annual
rankings (5,000 meters, second, 1962).
That year he won the British Empire and Commonwealth Games six miles and
took bronze in the three.
For
the Sixties era, his PR vaccination card recorded national- and world-class
entries. Two miles were run in 8:38.2. Five thousand meters required 13:43.8, the
ten took 29:46.4. On the roads his
marathon best was 2:20:18 and earned him a Peach Bowl title.
The
British Empire and Commonwealth ten thousand meter championship race in l962
was perhaps his greatest international performance. In a boiling Perth, Australia, the hottest in
49 years, the temperature cooled to 84 degrees at race time. Kidd surged with
three laps to go and won by fifty yards in 28:26.6.
,
That
year Kidd ran 48 races and won all but six.
In addition to his Commonwealth win he set Canadian and world under-20
records in four events. For the second
consecutive year, the Canadian press voted him the nation’s Male Athlete of the
Year.
Kidd’s
brilliance wasn’t apparent early. Growing
up in Ontario, like many a sport obsessed youngster, it took some time before
he found running was his calling. When a high school gym teacher called for the
annual mile run, Kidd was an easy winner. At fifteen he landed on the track where the
renowned Fred Foot of the East York Track Club guided some of the world’s top
athletes. The fledgling joined EYTC in l958, where his close friends came to be
elites Bill Crothers, Abby Hoffman, and Doug Gilbert.
His
early training, which progressed from speed work to heavy distance sessions,
soon brought national attention. Kidd’s high school two-mile record of 8:42 was
finally beaten eight years later by Steve Prefontaine. The Canadian was beginning to attract
scholarship offers from U.S. schools.
While
at Malvern Collegiate High School in Toronto, he traveled to Boston to take the
Harvard entrance exam, and ran his first indoor race, the Boston Knights of
Columbus two mile. At the tape, the youngster had defeated Peter McArdle and
Fred Norris, each an accomplished international fixture, in 8:49.2. The Boston Globe headline read: “Kidd,
17, Steals the Show at K of C.”
He
had always wanted to stay in Canada, so he matriculated to the University of
Toronto, continuing to train with Fred Foot and East York.
In
Sports Illustrated, Gwilym Brown described his running style: “He runs up
on the tips of his toes and carried his shoulders high. His feet reach out
almost like a pair of hands to clutch the track ahead, and he pumps his arms
awkwardly, far out in front of him like a telephone operator at a busy plug-in
switchboard.” British tabloids called
him the Dog-Paddling Kidd.
At
age nineteen, his growing celebrity led the National Film Board of Canada to feature
Kidd in an eleven-minute, black-and-white film called Runner. The documentary features a narrative written
by the poet W.H. Auden, and a race in which Kidd defeats Laszlo Tabori, who had
held the world 1500 meter record at one time, and U.S. Olympian Max Truex.
Another
of his impressive victories came in l962 at the Compton Relays when he beat New
Zealand’s Murray Halberg, the 1960 Olympic champion and world record holder for
both the five thousand and three miles. With a lap and a half left, Kidd took
over the lead and was never headed. Result: American records for both distances,
and a Canadian junior world mark which stood for 54 years.
He
was successful on grass and in the hills, as well.
At
twenty, he won the 1963 National AAU cross country race in New York City’s Van
Cortlandt Park, edging Peter McArdle by four-tenths of a second. Billy Mills
was third, trailing the winner by twenty-five seconds. A year
later Kidd would face Mills again in the Olympic final, with a sadly different
outcome.
With
YouTube, you can catch a glimpse of Kidd among the 38 starters—he’s in the
second row in a cream top and reddish-orange shorts. Twenty-eight minutes later
you’ll catch a few seconds of him as he runs in the second lane and watches the
Billy Mills Show roar by him in lane one as the American surges to snatch victory
from the favored competitors, Mohamed Gammoudi and Ron Clarke. Kidd will cross
the finish line in a desultory 26th place. He finished ninth in a
heat of the five thousand and did not qualify for the final.
Link to Tokyo 1964. Ref to Paul's quote can be seen at 49:45 on the video. ed. Tokyo 1964
Looking
back at the disastrous Olympic race where he was favored to medal, Kidd told Toronto
Star writer Milt Dunnell, “There is no doubt in my mind now that I had a
thorough attack of stage fright, something unparalleled in my existence. You
don’t go back and dwell on your victories, but you worry about your losses for
the rest of your life.
“I
was so scared that I didn’t have any thought processes at all. I almost blacked out. I can’t remember those guys lapping me.”
Injuries
and overtraining put paid to athletic dreams. His only Olympic appearance marked
the end of his elite running career.
Kidd’s
academic credentials: his Bachelor of Arts degree is in political economy from
the University of Toronto; his master’s is in adult education and came from the
University of Chicago, where he also ran in University of Chicago Track Club
events on the greatly-missed Stagg Field, notable for its oblong configuration. His Ph.D. is in history and was conferred by
York University. He joined the
University of Toronto’s physical education department in l970 and was appointed
dean in l998.
Encouraged
by progressive parents to speak out on the issues of the day, often against the
prevailing conservative culture, Kidd eventually criticized the racism and
sexism of Canadian amateur sport, the treatment of players in the National
Hockey League, and American control of the Canadian Football League. He was
also a well-known advocate for gender and racial justice, and an academic
leader at the University of Toronto. His
early activism centered on the apartheid system in South Africa.
In
l968 he was named to the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame and in 2004, an Officer
of the Order of Canada, which recognized his “outstanding achievement,
dedication to the community and service to the nation.”
Roger
Robinson, writing in Canadian Running Magazine in 2015, summed up Kidd’s
life: “Bruce Kidd still stands—for his short period at the top—as Canada’s
greatest ever long-distance track runner.
He also stands—for a much longer period—as an important sports
intellectual, thinker, scholar, writer, opinion leader, agitator, and
activist. For five decades he has led,
inspired, provoked and annoyed people—annoyed them more because in the fullness
of time he has usually been proven right.”
On
that l964 evening when the smokers’ haze clung to the Chicago Stadium ceiling, organist
Al Melgard serenaded the two milers from the arena’s world famous 40,000-pipe
organ. Bruce Kidd bounded around the
Stadium track twenty-two times, finishing second to Bob Schul who would win an
Olympic gold medal that summer.
Bruce
Kidd was an honored principal athlete performing in world-class company.
Paul O’Shea writes from his home in Fairfax, Virginia and is looking forward to attending his eighth
Worlds, in Eugene. In his younger and more vulnerable years he believes he shared the University of
Chicago track with a spectacular Canadian visitor.
Thanks to Paul O’Shea for his detailed review of Bruce Kidd’s athletic career. I had the great privilege to witness all Bruce’s successes beginning in 1961 as a 16-year-old high school student when I joined the East York Track Club. It was already a group of hard working and talented individuals who were volunteer coached by Fred Foot, a man who wanted to make a difference in the community following his WWII experiences. It had a family – like atmosphere with lots of good humor during warm-up but demanded a commitment that only your best effort would be satisfactory. People like Bruce and Bill (Crothers) bought into it and reaped the benefits. I was consumed by it as well and ran a world 17-year-old high school best of 4:07.5 after 1 year of training in 1962. Bruce was 19 years old and ran way over his head as usual and won the race in 4:01.4 to break the Canadian record by more than 3 seconds previously held by Richard Ferguson as a result of his 3rd place result in the Bannister – Landy Miracle Mile of 1954 in Vancouver. Bruce was unstoppable in 1962. I regularly watched in amazement at his achievements. I worked hard in training but Bruce could always do more. His sprinting speed was very average but he had such determination and guts. Bruce would challenge the field when his competitors felt the worst and would leave them behind exhausted with no sprinting speed at the end. He applied this attitude to all his successes in academia and activism later in life. I am proud to know him as a close friend and have had him, as well as other East York Track Club members, as role models during my crucial teenage development years.
David Bailey PhD (Pharmacology); Personal Best Mile 3:57.7
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