Month: January 2017

Terang is a small town in country Victoria, about 215 km from Melbourne. Home to 2400 people, Terang’s claim to fame lies in its peat beds, former Collingwood player Ronnie Wearmouth, and trotting champion Gammalite.

It’s a nice town, but unfortunately, like a lot of smaller Victorian towns, it’s now a good coffee stop on the way to bigger towns like Warnambool, just up the road.

There was a professional athletics meeting at Terang not too long ago ,where the mile race  was won by 50 year old Sean Quilty.

Quilty also represented Australia at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Two great memories, 20 years apart, in a running career lasting 38 years and counting.

Quietly spoken, modest and easy going, 50 year old Quilty was a champion runner. Years ago he was world class with a personal best of 2.13.20 for the marathon. He admitted his best is behind him though.

As far as the pro circuit goes, he is most likely the most credentialed athlete going around, and I am willing to bet most don’t even know it.

Young runners, new to professional athletics, probably don’t give him a sideways glance. He doesn’t care, he runs because he loves it.

When you get chatting to him, you realise that he is very measured when he speaks, probably the result of his job as an insurance underwriter. Or is it simply because he is a no fuss type of guy?

Watching him win the mile at Terang, it’s clear he loves running.

On an oval surrounded by trees, amongst the casual atmosphere of a well- organised country race meeting, he reminded me of a man addicted to the sport. Somewhat like Forest Gump, he just keeps running.

He does what a good pro runner does, and turns up each week.

“I get a buzz from it”, he said.

“I really like the sport, the social aspect of it and I love the competition”.

He started running at age 12 and with an Olympic and two Commonwealth Games appearances, three world championships, a world cross country championship and two Australian marathon titles, his record speaks for itself.

He finished 34^th in the Atlanta Olympics and won a silver medal in the Alberta Canada Commonwealth games marathon. Like the modest person that he is, he seems more comfortable talking about how his elite career finished.

“My body started failing in about 1999. I put my worst performance in at the Seville world championships where I ran 2.56 for the marathon. I would get to about 35 kilometres into a race and start cramping up. I tried to run after 1999 and get back to the world championships but my body was failing and I called it quits”.

Aside from the Olympic Games, his silver medal at the Commonwealth games is a career highlight.

“I was lucky to get the silver to be honest. I thought I was in the right place at the right time. I remember I came back from the Commonwealth games and I was having a run with a friend and I said that same thing to him. My friend disagreed and said I was the right bloke, in the right place, at the right time. I often think back to that, maybe he was right”.

“It was interesting, in that race I was 10^th with 12 km to go. I just seemed to run the perfect race for the last 10kms. I drew everybody in, and ended up running 2 hours 14 minute and 57 seconds, which was a two second PB at the time”.

Quilty doesn’t look fast but he is. He has a distinctive, shuffle type style that comes from running efficiently. His technique doesn’t have a thousand moving parts, perfect for longer distance runner.

Trained by John Hurst for many years and now Marteen Beer, it’s said that Quilty is a great motivator, an inspiration to many. These were comments from his own stable, people who look up to him.

His wife Laura, a typical athletics ‘widow’ has been following what has been a permanent fixture on the professional running circuit for the last 15 years.

Continuing what is now a family tradition, his son Donovan (named after sprinting sensation Donavan Bailey) had his first professional race at Sandringham in 2016.

Quilty thinks he might have won around 15 pro races but he is just guessing.

His highlight on the pro circuit came in 2006 when he won the Frontmarkers mile at Stawell.

“To win was great but I never really went out to try and win a race at Stawell”.

“I am pretty laid back and reserved and if I was to sum up my own career, it was more on the basis that I never thought really big about achieving things but I feel I achieved more than I set out to achieve”, he said.

He is almost bashful when talking about himself. Modesty is a great trait.

There are many on the Pro circuit with a good story to tell, but the story of Sean Quilty is one for the ages.

Without any shadow of a doubt he is one of Australia’s best athletes still pounding the track, and like most pro runners, he is always on the lookout for “a lift”.

 

 

 

In the first of a series of stories about professional sprinters called “True Colours”, we explore a photo and uncover an athlete.

With hands held aloft, this is the story of Les Williams.

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Great photos, like great athletes, are timeless.

A photo, taken at the right moment, gives meaning to that moment and conveys a mood, romance and raw emotion with no need for words.

Famous US photographer Annie Leibovitz, built a career around taking iconic photos that tell stories.

In a sport considered one of Australia’s most historic, there is a photo that sums up not only the sport, but the passion and emotion of the athletes that inhabit it.

It is an extraordinary professional athletics photo, taken not at the famous Stawell Gift as you would expect but at the finish of the Keilor 300 metre masters final.

Somewhat like explaining religion to a non-believer, explaining professional athletics to non-runners is frustrating at best and long the subject of clumsy conversations.

Taken by Irene King, the photo captures the last moments of a professional footrace perfectly and from my perspective defines the sport.

Almost like lining up at your local take away restaurant at dinner time, nine runners finished a race packed together, straining for the tape and the win.

Professional athletes, Neil Brennan, Martin Barrow, Mark Howard, Les Williams, Scott Shillito, Jamie Johns, Shane Buckingham, Mandy Emmett, Dale Jones and Richard Wearmouth, are now part of folklore.

Like an Annie Liebovitz picture, the photo reads very well and presents a rainbow of colour strewn across the track.

From the outside and within a blink of an eye, the backmarker in red, Brennan, was almost parallel to the ground after having crashed past a heaving Martin Barrow in Blue. The yellow of Mark Howard seems resigned to his fate as the grey of Les Williams, arms held aloft, takes the win in front of the fast finishing pink runner of Scott Shillito.

It was everything we like to see in a ‘pro’ race. A bunched final 30 metres, physical toughness, hard running back markers pushing wide, and front markers using their handicap to force the ‘backies’ to dig deep and get around them.

It was a race in inches but magnificent by any measure.

You could argue that there are more famous professional running photos. Chris Perry crossing the line ahead of Mick Guilieri in the 1982 Stawell Gift is a good example. Maybe even the picture of George McNeil crossing the finish line at Stawell is another. Both magnificent photos no doubt but none convey the meaning of professional athletics, quite like this photo.

For the winner, Les Williams, it was his 64^th win on the professional running circuit, and his first in seven years.

Williams says he is about 6ft tall but I am sure he is giving himself an inch or two. He has to be 5ft10 if anything.

He has a slight frame decorated with a few tattoos and there isn’t an ounce of fat on him.

An easy going guy he is always up for a chat and to use Aussie lingo, he is a ‘good bloke’.

A serious competitor on the track, he is a delight off it, and is known by everybody on the circuit.

His memory of the race itself was hazy but he clearly recalls the moments after his win.

“I didn’t really know what was going on but as soon as I hit the line people came from everywhere, it was amazing. It was an incredible race”.

“How good was the picture, I mean you have people in sixth spot throwing at the line, it was that competitive”, he said.

With a rugged earthy look and a tanned complexion, Williams has been running professionally since 1972.

16 years old at the time and with the grand old stager Charlie Booth by his side, he remembers his first race like it was yesterday.

“It was at Keilor funnily enough and Charlie entered me in the mile. I was a sprinter and I am not sure why I was in the mile. Everybody was in the showers when I came in, I was that far last”, he laughed.

“In those days, pro running was a long process and I got thrashed early on”.

“Charlie was the inventor of the starting blocks and the bloke who got me into pro running. He is really responsible for me being in the sport”.

Other than Charlie Booth, he was trained by the likes of John Bell, Fergie Speakman, John Hawke, Wally Meacham and Marteen Beer.

Now 60 years old and with 44 years of experience in his legs, he has some great memories of a sport that has been good to him.

He rates his win in the 400 metres at Stawell, his Zatopek mile win and his two Bendigo 400 wins, as career highlights.

“I was lucky with the blokes that trained me. I won 46 races with Wally and we won in events from the 70 metres through to the mile”.

Now a grandfather, he could be forgiven for sitting back and relaxing at his home overlooking 90 mile beach and reflecting on a great career. Those that know him know that this couldn’t be further from the truth.

“I love the sport, it has been my whole life and I can’t see myself changing”.

“Not many people get a chance to run in front of big crowds at Stawell and also in front of 80,000 people at the cricket”.

Once Williams starts talking about professional athletics, he gets on a roll and is tough to stop.

“In the 70s and 80s the sport was huge and every week you were running in front of big crowds. You not only had the Stawell Gift but there were races like the Dandy Dollar Dash which had prizemoney of $10,000 and a car”.

With far ranging opinions on the sport, he admits the modern day version is somewhat different to what it used to be.

“It is still very competitive but there isn’t as many runners or race meetings around these days and the prizemoney isn’t the same”.

“In the past pro running was always in the major papers, now it hardly gets any publicity”.

With a son that has also run in the ‘pros’, it appeared to be a real family affair.

Dismissing the thought, he laughed and said, “my son ran a bit but the last time my wife Debbie watched me run was in 1983, when I won the 400 at Stawell”.

A character on the professional running circuit, Les Williams doesn’t need a photo to underline his contribution to the sport, it was simply appropriate that someone like Les was in that race, and in front when the photo was taken.

Almost like a movie script, the photo tells a unique story about a sport and an athlete, both of whom should never be forgotten.