You don’t need to be around high achievers for very long to realise that it isn’t talent alone which separates them from the rest of us; it is mostly obsession. They are obsessives. If it hadn’t been running or jumping or throwing, it would have been something else – stamp collecting, train-spotting, serial-killing, et al.
John Tarrant was an obsessive about running; an obsessive to the point of exclusion, of family, friends, colleagues; and the sort of mutual interaction that you and I might enjoy – a visit to the pub, a restaurant, the theatre, cinema, television, a concert, the ballet; whatever makes life more enjoyable, even more comprehensible.
Tarrant quietly became one of the best long distance runners in Britain in the 1950s. But the ‘amateur’ authorities prevented him from competing, because when he tried to join a club, he made the mistake of declaring a paltry £17 (about $40 at the time) that he had earned in teenage boxing bouts. After much anger and frustration, and repeated attempts to get the ban overturned, Tarrant hit back in the only way open to him.
Since he couldn’t be prevented from running on the highway, he started gate-crashing road races, competing without a number. A canny newspaperman, learning of his exclusion for being a ‘pro’ christened him the Ghost Runner; and a legend was born.
Tarrant was eventually reinstated, but when he sought selection for the 1960 Olympic Games – finishing second in one of the qualifying races (first brought automatic selection) – he was told that his reinstatement was only for domestic races. He took up the mantle of the Ghost Runner again, in order to run abroad. It is testimony to the good sense of long distance runners everywhere that he was accepted, supported and championed by the vast majority of his peers wherever he went.
He turned to ultra running as he got older, and broke world records for 40 and 100 miles. While staying in South Africa, and rejected by the national federation and its officers, as he had once been by the Brits, he saw some sort of equation between the system of apartheid and his own exclusion. He began entering, and winning, non-white races; helping, according to black and ‘coloured’ officials, to chip away at the bastion of apartheid, which would eventually fall some 20 years later.
The occasional stomach problems he had had throughout his career got worse in South Africa, but a succession of doctors there and back in the UK could find nothing wrong – until it was too late. John Tarrant died of cancer, aged 42.
I have written elsewhere about the Ghost Runner (link), most recently in 2008, when I signalled that a new book was closing in on the presses. I’m glad to report that not only has The Ghost Runner; The Tragedy of the Man They Couldn’t Stop been published; but that it is a finely written and engrossing read.
Former Granada TV documentary maker, Bill Jones first heard of Tarrant years ago, when he was making a programme about Salford Harriers. Repeated references by club members to their former colleague got then kept Jones intrigued until early retirement three years ago gave him the opportunity to indulge in a bit of obsessing himself. The book, with some lovely, descriptive passages counterpointing the blunt, hard (to believe) reality of Tarrant’s tragic life, is the result.
This sort of book is just as much a labour of love as Tarrant’s running was to him. I only wish that Jones had indulged his capacity for lyric, descriptive writing a little more. That is not a criticism, more a recognition that the wastelands that Tarrant inhabited didn’t permit it. And, in the end, the story is the thing.
Thirty years ago, Tarrant himself gave us his own, naïve, self-penned portrait in a book with the same title. Bill Jones has embellished that rough sketch; and in doing so has given John Tarrant the testament he deserves.
Go and buy it.
Pat,
I can remember reading about John Tarrant and many other British road runners in the Athletics Weekly.
This was in the day of the small format Athletics Weekly magazine.
I really appreciate you work on this.Of course there are not many American fans that remember these men of British running lore.
I seem to recall a set of male twins that ran during that time, and one who became an Olympian at 10 Km after jumping into the trial race, that he was not qualified for and getting third place.
Thank for the effort.
Cy Quinn
Louisiana
USA
Cy,
you’re thinking about the Holt twins, ran for Hercules Wimbldeon
Bob was probably the better, but it was Dave who jumped into the A race at the 1972 AAA Champs (Olympic Trials), and finished 4th, 3rd Brit, behind Dave Bedford, thus got selected for Munich.
a couple of months later, Bob ran two seconds faster, 28.39 in the Southern Counties champs.
Interesting book, Pat; on a story that perhaps needs to be retold. Back in the 1980′s a man named Robert Hamilton-Jones gained some publicity for running unofficially in a few road races in the south of England. He had been handed an automatic 4 year drugs suspension for refusing a dope test after racing over 5000 metres in a British League Cup match at West London Stadium – he tried for some time to pass a sample into the glass, but being dehydrated on a hot day was unable to do so, and was anxious to get to work in Southampton where he was due on a night shift. So he decided to decline the test, in spite of being warned of the inevitable outcome.
There was some sympathy for Hamilton-Jones: no one seriously believed that a club runner (of 15 minutes 5km standard) deliberately avoided a drugs test to hide his own use of banned substances; but of course the rule does not allow for exceptions.
Bob and David Holt by the way, were not twins, but two thirds of a set of triplets – sadly, their sister Judy died some years ago.
It’s a good story well told, but oversimplified and in places lacking in knowledge of the sport. I was longing for some weekly mileage totals so that I could assess how obsessed Tarrant really was. The yearly totals given at one point are quite high for that era, but not exceptional. My main complaint is that the book overstates the injustice. It makes a fuss about how Tarrant was robbed of a place in the 1960 Olympic marathon team, when his best time (2:22:35, run after the team was selected) ranked him 8th in UK at best. Peter Wilkinson and Fred Norris missed out with times in the 2:19s. If he wanted selection, why didn’t Tarrant run the Poly that year? That’s never mentioned. Why didn’t he run the RRC Champs, near Liverpool on July 30 (not mentioned), where O’Gorman (not mentioned) sealed his place with 2:18:15.6 (not mentioned)? Tarrant chose to run his 2:22, also at Liverpool (no date given), after the team was announced. Brian Kilby was scarcely “virtually unknown” when he won the AAA marathon, having placed second in the Poly (not mentioned) a month before in 2:22:53 at age 22. There’s no need for this kind of misleading selected information. The original ban on Tarrant was fatuous, and he deserves admiration for getting himself into the top ten in UK. But so do the other nine, some also from tough beginnings.
And where did Jones get the idea that all officials, even in the north, were posh Oxbridge chaps with trilby hats? Often the pettiest, most officious enforcers of the rules were and are those who find their only significance in such positions – eg Jack Crump. The book mentions Crump’s humble origins but quickly reverts to its schoolboy version of how British class worked at that era.
I first read about the Ghost Runner as a teenager in the News Chronicle. Later, all runners I knew sympathised with him. The book tells his personal story well. It’s just a pity that – like Tarrant in his races – it simply tries too hard.
John Phelan, ex Hercules Wimbledon who is with my club Wolds Vets now bumped into him a few times. John Tarrants son is now a member of my club and his grandson also called John runs for Cleethorpes AC close to us.
One of our older runners Les Lyon also got a ban for taking a small puurse from boxing, he missed some of his best years at Grimsby Harriers from this.