40th anniversary issue
The December 7 issue in 1985 was the 40th anniversary issue and the cover star was Seb Coe – with the words: "Britain’s greatest?"
There were no major championships that year and Steve Cram and Said Aouita had been the stars of the season, although that wasn't reflected in an issue that was mostly spent looking back at earlier times.
The magazine then cost 50p – five times the cost it was in 1970. It was 72 pages though an incredibly high 27 pages of it were adverts.
The audited circulation was 24,744 - well up on the 11,330 from 15 years earlier.
Barry Trowbridge was the editor, with Bryan Smyth the assistant editor and Mel Watman the 1970 editor, now the consultant editor.
Page 5 contains a piece on the British Athletics League and poaching and is by current contributor Tom Pollak.
The next item is a six-page article on Seb Coe with Watman choosing him as Britain’s greatest ever athlete and listing his major performances and career highlights up to that point.
The next section on page 15 is less positive and concerns "disturbing trends in athletics" with articles by BBC commentator Ron Pickering and European Athletics president Sir Arthur Gold.
It covered drugs and money and the negative aspects in the sport at the time.
Trackwise, the more in-depth news section also covered money and subventions.
It also outlined that seven athletes had been pre selected for the European Championships the following summer. They were: Steve Jones (marathon), Seb Coe (800m or 1500m), Steve Cram (1500m), Daley Thompson (decathlon), Zola Budd (3000m), Tessa Sanderson and Fatima Whitbread (javelin).
Coe, Cram, Thompson and Whitbread all ultimately won gold medals. Budd was fourth, Jones 20th after building a big lead and Sanderson did not compete.
There is a two-page feature on Tom McKean, who started the season as a 1:48.40 performer but improved to 1:46.05 and won the European Cup and UK Championships. He would go on to eventually win European outdoor, World Cup and European and world indoor titles.
In the "Coaching Forum" there is article on winter work for novice sprinters by British Athletics coach Richard Simmons.
On page 29 there is an article by Watman about how the magazine began and contains a photo of magazine founder Jimmy Green alongside the Queen Mother in 1948 and Watman and Green at the 1964 Olympics.
Probably the best part of this magazine for athletics aficionados are the black and white photo spreads depicting highlights from the past 40 years.
These include Fanny Blankers-Koen, Arne Andersson and Sydney Wooderson, Arthur Wint, Emil Zatopek, Roger Bannister, Derek Ibbotson and Chris Chataway, Al Oerter, Herb Elliott, Peter Snell, the 1964 British Olympic champions, Bob Beamon, Ron Clarke, David Hemery, Dick Fosbury, Lillian Board, Lasse Viren, Mary Peters, David Bedford, Irena Szewinska, Ed Moses, Yuriy Sedykh, Marita Koch, Evelyn Ashford, Daley Thompson, Carlos Lopes, Willie Banks, Carl Lewis and Steve Ovett, Coe and Cram.
Just as in the 1970 issue there are congratulatory message pages.. There is one from Buckingham Palace and Prince Phillip as well as the likes of Thompson, Coe, Bannister and Mary Peters.
Thompson said: “The only morning I get up before the crack of noon is when my AW arrives in the post Friday morning!”
There is a five-page excerpt from Peter Sperryn’s book – Sports and Medicine on Running Injuries.
There is only a page of overseas results with Budd getting the headlines for a Rosemont 10km win in Chicago in 32:29 ahead of Lisa Martin’s 33:32.
The results also show Ovett was slightly slower in finishing 63rd in Ukiah in 32:15 though that result was two months old but he had won the road mile the previous day in a more respectable 3:55.2.
The European race highlight is the Jean Bouin 9.5km where Mike McLeod outsprinted 3:47.79 miler and then double 1500m European indoor champion Jose-Luis Gonzalez and European 10,000m champion and future world marathon champion Abel Anton in 26:02.
The 1970 Commonwealth Games 800m champion Rosemary Wright finished second in a marathon in Auckland in 2:46:41 and she was now a resident Kiwi.
Of the UK road results, a few stand out. Current top M65 star Nigel Gates won the Marlborough 10km in 29:35 while first M50 (and vet overall) was 1962 European 5000m champion Bruce Tulloh (32:30).
Gates’ wife Julia won the women’s race in 34:06 while Tulloh’s twin daughters Katherine and Jo-Jo were joint winners of the junior race in 13:34.
The Elementa Building Society Half-Marathon attracted a top class field.
Steve Harris, who the following year would be Britain’s 10km road champion, won easily in a fast 62:08 from current top announcer and coach Geoff Wightman (63:32) and London Marathon winners Charlie Spedding (64:58) and Mike Gratton (65:30).
Sally-Ann Hales, who had been third in the London Marathon in 2:28:38, matched that position in the women’s race with a vastly inferior 79:56.
Veteran Pam Jones was second in the Ingatestone 5 in 34:25, and she was third in the 2019 World Masters Indoor Championships W80 3000m race.
Mark Vile, a former National youths champion and now a leading coach for Cambridge and Coleridge, was third in the Victoria Park Road Races over 4 miles in 19:36.
The best quality road race of the period though was the Kodak 10km Classic at Southend. Mark Scrutton, a NCAA indoor two miles champion and a 27:55 10km performer in 1984, won the race in 28:49.
Neil Tennant (who went on to run 62:39 for the half-marathon) and 2:15:17 marathoner Graham Payne completed the top three in 29:00 and 29:02 respectively.
The 1983 world steeplechase medallist Colin Reitz was fourth (29:05), world cross-country silver medallist Tim Hutchings was 11th (29:33) and future world half-marathon bronze medallist Carl Thackery was 12th in 29:37. Wightman was 14th, Olympic 10,000m fourth-placer Tony Simmons was 19th in 30:01. Dave Cox, still running well today as an M65 England international, was 36th in 31:02.
Rob Denmark, who would go on to win the Commonwealth 5000m title, was first youth in 53rd in 32:01, while the 1992 European indoor 1500m champion Matthew Yates was fifth youth in 33:50.
Alison Hollington, who was second in the WAAA 5000m, won the women’s race in 33:18 from Glynis Penny (34:26), who would go on to finish third in the following year’s London Marathon. Along with her husband Keith, the pair formed probably the top couple in UK road running for many years.
Cross-country results included the Berry Hill Open and second was Barrie Moss, who was aged 30 then but at the age of 16 in 1972, he ran 8:13.42 for 3000m in the AAA Junior race and 48 years later that is still the British under-17 record.
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