The Ghost Runner

A couple of weeks ago it was All Hallows Eve and the streets were awash with tiny, little ghouls accompanied by responsible adults ensuring they didn’t make too much mischief in their endless quest for sweets. It is a time when it’s said that the veil that separates the dead from the living drops, allowing the departed to cross into our realm. Traditionally (as in bygone pagan times), it’s a three day affair. I wanted to write something fitting to the occasion, but in typical Tim-stylee, I got distracted by a million other things.

So better late than never, here is a short tale of the Ghost Runner. Read on..

if you dare!

Okay, so it’s not that spooky a tale. In fact, it’s not spooky at all. But it is a tale of exclusion, and a sad one at that, too. The subject of this story is a certain John Tarrant. He was a London lad born in the 1930’s, and he got off to a pretty tragic start in life. Whilst his father was away fighting in the war, his mother died of tuberculosis so he and his younger brother, Victor, were moved into a children’s home until his father returned. A couple of years after the end of the war, his dad remarried and they all upped sticks and moved to Buxton in the Peak District (a lovely place. Well worth a visit if you get chance).

It was there that John discovered boxing. He was pretty good at it. Good enough to win the odd bit of prize money in bouts staged at the local town hall. Just enough to cover expenses, but it wasn’t really his thing so he didn’t stick with it for long. However, it was during his training that he discovered a love of running, and that just like boxing, he had a gift for it. So that’s what he set his sights on. Specifically, the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. He wanted to be a champion marathoner. He certainly didn’t do things by halves.

Now, in order to become an Olympian, there are a few hoops you have to jump through and the first is to become a registered athlete with UK Athletics (specifically, the subdivision that corresponds to your country). You join an accredited club and then you can compete in championships. Oh, and Olympic team trials, of course.

So, John applied to the Salford Harriers, one of his local fell and trail running clubs. UK Athletics and England Athletics didn’t exist back
in the 1950’s. The overseeing body was the Amateur Athletic Association of England (AAA). John’s application to join the Salford Harriers was turned down. The reason? He was considered a professional athlete as he’d previously received money for
competing in sport! Subsequently, he was banned from ever competing in any amateur championships. All because he’d won the odd pot of money during his brief dalliance with boxing.

Being dealt that crushing blow was not enough to deter John from being the best runner he could be, though. He might not make it onto the Olympic podium, or any other championship podium for that matter, but it sure as heck wasn’t going to stop him competing in races.

What did he do? He gate-crashed these races, often beating champion runners to the finish line. This naturally drew the attention of the press, who gave him the nickname ‘the Ghost Runner’, and it was this attention and his popularity that eventually saw those AAA rules relaxed to allow him to compete in national championships. Unfortunately for John, he was still never allowed to represent his country so his dream of winning the 1960 Olympic marathon never came to fruition.

Life has a habit of throwing us curveballs, and it can be all too easy to accept the limitations imposed upon us by others. Running was John’s passion, and he had a dream and a clear plan of how to realise that dream. We can only imagine how devastated he must have felt when his dream was snuffed out at the first hurdle. What they couldn’t do, though, was snuff out his passion. Only he could do that, and he chose not to. And what a legacy he left, eh?

We could all do with being a bit more John from time to time.

Footnotes

*The AAA is still in existence today, and it does a lot of outreach work to encourage and support young athletes, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

*There are many instances of ghost runners throughout the history books. Most noticeably, women, who were often banned from competing based solely on disinformation about what their bodies could and couldn’t do (spoiler alert: their wombs didn’t fall out!). This deserves a post all of its own.