British 800m runner looks back on his victory at the World Junior Championships in Athens in 1986 in 1:48.32

Steve Cram ran for our club, Jarrow & Hebburn, and he’d won gold at the first world senior championships in 1983 but I wasn’t really inspired by that – or anyone, for that matter. I didn't really get into athletics through my own choice. I just had a hell of a lot of natural ability.

I was running well through secondary school, even winning the 200m, 400m, 800m, long jump, high jump and triple jump. I remember sports day, and going up to get six or seven gold medals off that ability. I only joined the athletics club because I was at my local youth club one night and they were taking names to run a fun run in South Shields on the coming Sunday morning.

It's probably one of the best 10ks I've ever run. I never liked running any longer distances but I won it in about 33 minutes, which was incredible for that age. After that there was a guy who said to me: “You really, really need to join an athletics club if you’re running that type of time off no training.”

For a lot of athletes, they took up athletics when they were 11 or 12 and they wanted to achieve something. If you asked Steve Cram at that age, I’m sure he’d have said: “I want to win Olympic gold. I want to break world records.” I was quite the opposite, but things progressed really, really quickly.

The thing is I didn't really want it. I had other things on my mind. I had to be persuaded to train. I was into motorbikes. I used to go up to Westgate Road in Newcastle and watch people go mad on their bikes every Saturday without fail. But, lo and behold, when I took up athletics nearly all the races were on Saturdays so I remember arguing with my dad when he said: “Are you going to go and run this race?” and I was determined to skip it to see the motorbikes.

Once I started running well and winning races, things changed. But it's no secret that, at that time, I was racing go-karts and I wanted to be a rally driver. I just wasn’t the same type as other athletes.

I did enjoy it, I thrived on the success and I was proud of certain things I'd done. But, in all honesty, I found training a chore – especially getting up on a Sunday morning and going for 10-mile runs, which I did not enjoy one little bit. Even though I was quite successful on the track, I hated running cross-countries, but my coach Jimmy Hedley would obviously get us to do it and he’d say: “Crammy used to run cross countries.”

If I could get away with not training, I wouldn't train. It all kept coming back to this natural ability I had, especially the turn of speed. What I did enjoy was the track work: and the 10x400s, the 10x300s. I used to do a lot of flat out 200s.

I loved all that but the long runs in between, the Saturday morning runs – we used to do a thing called the park session – I absolutely detested. It was weird, because athletics wasn't my thing. It's something that I took up. I went to championships off nowhere near as much training as I should have done. If you look at my career, that's probably why I wasn't consistent from one year to the next. Everyone knew I was a lazy so-and-so. Even when I went to the Olympic trials in 1988 and 1992 and missed out, I wasn’t too bothered. I just made plans to go bird watching in Scotland.

But 1986 was the first ever World Junior Championships and it was a really, really good year. I ran 1:45 in Brussels, I did Oslo and a couple of international matches and some really fantastic indoor races.

The strange thing is that I wasn't aware that there was going to be a World Junior Championships more or less until it happened. If you had said to me: “Look, the World Junior Championships are in July in Athens,” when I was training in January or February of 1986, they wouldn’t have been in my goals for the year.

I never used to think that far ahead but because I was streets ahead of anyone else on a junior team with regards to times, especially over the 800m, it was a foregone conclusion that I would be going and that I would be picked.

I was down for the 800m and 1500m and, somehow, Jimmy wangled that I could go out there a week before the rest of the British team. It was a nightmare with the hot weather, me having ginger hair and fair skin. I was really fit, and me and Jimmy were staying in the centre of Athens, but we couldn't even get on the track to train all week beforehand.

That meant all the speed work was done in the local park but I flew in the 800m final. I’d run very poorly in the 1500m final and finished fifth but it was still the case that if I’d come second or third in the World Juniors, I would have been happy and content. That's just the way I was.

I went through the bell in about 53-54 seconds, which was quite comfortable. With about 300m to go, I just took off and I took about ten metres out of the rest of the field to win in 1:48.32. I was five metres clear at the end. It's weird. It's a hell of an achievement and I remember Jimmy saying: “That’s unbelievable. You're the best in the world.”

Yet I’m more proud now than I was back then. I went back to Newcastle as world junior  champion but I was keener to go watch the motorbikes over planning what was coming up next. I just had this carefree attitude towards athletics. If I had finished third or fourth, I wouldn't have been that bothered.

As told to Mark Woods.

David Sharpe’s book ‘Enigma on Track: Wild Child to World Champion ‘ is available now – for our review see here.

David Sharpe
Born: July 8, 1967
Events: 800m and 1500m
PBs: 1:43.98/3:44.5
International honours
1990: European Championships 800m silver
1988: European Indoor Championships 800m gold
1986: World U20 Championships 800m gold