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Wizard from Oz PAT BUTCHER spoke to the enigmatic middle-distance legend PICTURES: Mark Shearman
WATCHING the recent television documentary on Bob Dylan by the celebrated director, Martin Scorsese, I found myself increasingly intrigued by Mr Tambourine Man’s interview technique. Because it reminded me of nothing more than Steve Ovett’s. Neither are quite up there with Eric Cantona’s hermetic pronouncements on sardines and trawlers, but they are equally impenetrable. Ovett, like Dylan, could seem very open and prepared to answer anything thrown at him. But, the question was just as likely to be thrown back, with interest, if not occasional acidity. The rest of the time, the presumption of questioners is simply rebuffed by a negative response, and a quizzical glance, which puts the questioners’ sanity in doubt. Because both men, although extremely personable, and very bright, seem concerned about keeping their lives and opinions to themselves, of pretending innocence of any intentions, all the while giving a semblance of normality. I have never interviewed Dylan, but, like his various interrogators, I have his songs, which give me a pretty good idea, despite his denials and evasions, of his politics and philosophy. I have interviewed Ovett, several times when he was at the height (and depth) of his career, and for eight hours during four successive days at his home in Australia, exactly two years ago this week, when I was researching my book on his rivalry with Seb Coe. I have also done TV commentary with Ovett for a couple of summers in the early noughties. So with him, I have the evidence of his races and of his responses and his demeanour in and around hotels, stadia, TV studios, restaurants et al, during the time that we worked together. But I’m not sure I know what he’s about any more than I know about Dylan, whom I have never met.
With Sebastian Coe in Prague at the 1978 European Championships – within three years their rivalry would reach a peak with records being broken on the international circuit seemingly at will The thing that has struck people most about Coe’s 49th birthday, on September 29, and Ovett’s 50th, which was three days ago, and indeed the latest anniversary of the Moscow Olympics, is that it has been a quarter of a century since their rivalry both illumined and ushered in radical change in world athletics. For their brilliance served as the catalyst that transmuted unworkable amateurism into open professionalism. But it is a reminder to all of us that we are (a lot) older than we thought; and of course, for those of us in the United Kingdom, it is a reminder that things were once not so desperate in British athletics as they are now. Take just one statistic. In 1980, the UK had five of the world’s top ten milers. As for now, well ... don’t even search! Now, unless you have been marooned for the last decade, and particularly the last couple of months, you’ll know exactly who Sebastian Coe is. He’s the guy who secured the Olympic Games for London 2012; he was formerly a Member of Parliament, and then aide-de-camp to the briefly Tory leader, William Hague; and he is the only man in history to win two Olympic 1500m titles. As an encore, he set a dozen world records. He also looks nowadays pretty much like he did when he won his Olympic titles 20 and more years ago. As for Ovett, well, no!
When we were working on the Golden Leagues for the IAAF TV department, Ovett could go anywhere in almost complete anonymity. But occasionally, I would see people staring at him, trying to figure out who he reminded them of. Very occasionally, they would twig, and look first surprised, then aghast. Because, the once skeletal Ovett is now, shall we say, a bit overweight. The hair that he was already losing 20 years ago is now almost completely gone, apart from the bit at the back, which he lets grow as if in compensation. The weight he can blame partly on a cycling accident, when he still lived in Scotland in the mid-Nineties. After retiring from elite athletics, he ran occasional cross country races, and took up triathlons, without too much success. Like many runners, swimming was not his forte. So he turned to duathlons. But when he was out training one rainy evening with a group of local cyclists, he took his turn at the front, and caught the brunt of a motorist, who pulled out of a sideroad directly in front of him. Ovett went over the handlebars, and the car, and he severed tendons around both knees, and sustained serious bruising and other dislocations. He claims to have been too lazy to have a remedial operation, but the last time we spoke, in Helsinki this summer, he said son Freddy had been badgering him to lose weight. Ovett and wife Rachel had moved from the south coast of England to Scotland in the mid-Eighties, before starting a family. But a dozen years later, with his four young children showing increasing aptitude for sport, the weather in Scotland was not conducive to progress. So, after some thought and discussion, and remembering a winter training location from two decades earlier, the family moved to Noosa, on Australia’s Sunshine Coast, a sub-tropical area, an hour’s drive north of Brisbane. Typically for Ovett, the first most people, including acqaintances, knew of this move was when they read my book three years later. But the change of scenery paid off for the children. At the beginning of 2004, his eldest, Alexandra finished third in the Australian junior 800m final in 2:16.3, in temperatures of 40°C. And, like her dad in LA, spent an hour in the medical tent, suffering from heat prostration. As Ovett emailed me, “She’s obviously inherited both my running talent, and my aversion to heat.” Another email turned up this July. It began typically, but went on proudly, “As you know I’m not too keen to look back ... but in this year 2005 and on this date, Freddy Ovett won his district 100, 200, 800, LJ, and relay and Alexandra Ovett was awarded a scholarship for her achievements in school and sport.” Freddy, aged 12, had in fact repeated what dad did in the Sussex Schools’ Championships 35 years ago. But, of course, if Freddy, or daughters, Alex, Georgie or Lois were to follow dad right to the top, they would be doing it for Australia. One thing that amuses former training partner, Matt Paterson, and indeed Rachel, is that for someone like Ovett, who was often very casual in his own approach to competition, he apparently works himself into a lather about his kids’ races. Paterson says, “He’s as nervous as can be, shaking. I say, ‘Steve, you’ll have a heart attack,’ and he says, ‘now I know what it was like for you and my mother when I was racing’.” Rachel says: “He has never actually been on the sidelines, so for him to suddenly watch, he gets himself in a terrible state. And I mean he is drenched in sweat, just hopeless, hopeless!” When I first approached Ovett about being interviewed for my book, I was worried he would say what he usually says: “That’s all in the past, nobody’s interested”. What he means, of course, is that he isn’t interested, for whatever reason. His best friend Paterson, who now lives in Melbourne confirms, “We never talked about running when we trained, and when we meet up now, he rarely talks about the past”. His children did not even know he was an Olympic champion, until one of their teachers mentioned it. Anyway, maybe I got him on a good day, because he agreed to be interviewed at length, although he claims not to have read the subsequent book. Again typically for Ovett, I’m not sure that’s true. All I got was another email, “Alex, Georgie, Freddy and Lois thank you for the book, and giving them many memories that their father may not have thought to tell.” Ovett made astute property investments in Scotland, so, despite the children being at private schools, he doesn’t have to do much more than occasional personal appearances, and cover major championships, either for Canadian TV or the IAAF, to make ends meet. He and Rachel also buy and sell property locally, with Ovett, who was once an art student with a talent for draughtsmanship, supplying the ideas for modifications. When I asked Rachel what else he might have been if not an athlete, she immediately replied: “Architect, he’s got this great visual sense. We’ll just go into a place and he’ll look around for a while, and say, ‘I think we should do this or that,’ and invariably it turns out just right.” One concession to old times and athleticism in the last couple of years was Ovett’s completion of the ‘Kokoda Trail’. Virtually unknown in Europe, this 96-kilometre trek through rainforest links the north and south coasts of Papua New Guinea, and recalls Australia’s bloodiest, yet successful engagement of World War II, in repulsing superior numbers of Japanese forces, and preventing them capturing Port Moresby, and potentially using it as a launching pad for an assault on Australia itself. Hundreds of Aussies walk the Kokoda Trail for charity every year, and Ovett got involved in one such trek two years ago. It turned out to be quite an occasion, as Ovett related. But he also gives an insight into how much people still recall those great days of a quarter of a century ago, and how he still finds it difficult to accept. “I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for. I agreed to do it on the phone, and then I looked it up on the internet. It takes nine days! I think I have always been slightly unaware of how that era or the impact that era had on the general public and perhaps even the world. Literally, I went into the jungle in Papua New Guinea, to a small village, Kokoda, which I have never even heard of before coming here. I get there and they put on a sing-sing, a major dance, which has been there for (John) Howard, the (Australian) prime minister before. “Because the mayor of the village happens to be an ex-5000 and 10,000 metres runner from Papua New Guinea, one of the very few runners they have ever sent to the Commonwealth Games. And he knows Steve Ovett, and this was his way of showing his respect and honour for someone like me turning up at the village. And that just completely blows me away. “I just think I do not deserve this. It’s something which totally embarrasses me sometimes, and I find it very hard to deal with, and it happens all the time. I think the name helps, it’s a very unusual name. People say ‘you are not the Steve Ovett?’ And I say, ‘yes, I’m sorry’. And they say, ‘oh, I remember those days,’ and they go off into a glaze, into a haze almost. And I find that bewildering.” The Perfect Distance: Ovett & Coe – The Record Breaking Rivalry by Pat Butcher, is now in paperback, Phoenix Sport, £6.99
From issue 59-41, 12th October 2005.
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