The Commonwealth Games by Brian Oliver

Author:Brian Oliver [Oliver, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472908438
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

‘We knew from the way he was running the year before that he might do it,’ said Brendan Foster. ‘It was an amazing race, one of the greatest in history. In fact the entire athletics programme of those Games was sensational, unbelievable.’ The Africans, more than anybody else, made it so. Besides the exploits of Bayi and Jipcho, Kenyans won the 400m, 800m, 110m hurdles and the 4 × 400m relay. A Ghanaian won the triple jump. Modupe Oshikoya, of Nigeria, became black Africa’s first female gold medallist when she won the long jump. She almost denied Mary Peters the pentathlon gold, and would become one of Nigeria’s most celebrated athletes.

Other heroes included the great sprinters Don Quarrie and Raelene Boyle, who were born a few months apart in 1951 in Jamaica and Australia respectively. Quarrie won twice for a ‘double double’ over 100m and 200m, having won both those events and the sprint relay in 1970. Boyle won both sprints and a relay gold, as she had done in Edinburgh, thereby securing a ‘double treble’.

Both of them had other matters to deal with before their races. ‘DQ’ sat an exam for his business administration degree at the USC on the Tuesday, flew to New Zealand on Wednesday and won gold three days later. Raelene Boyle was involved in a big argument over her tracksuit. She worked for, and wore, Puma, a rival to the Australian team sponsor Adidas. ‘The whole thing ballooned out of proportion and at one point it appeared I would be banned from running for my country,’ she said. The dispute was resolved and Boyle, who had suffered severe damage to her Achilles tendon in 1973, was a very relieved winner. She would have quit had she lost: she was still winning gold eight years later.

The BBC’s television coverage from Christchurch offered an uplifting alternative to all the grim news back in Britain. One of the highlights, which has since been viewed many thousands of times on the internet and featured in ‘TV Blooper’ programmes, was Alan Pascoe’s victory, and more notably its aftermath in the 400m hurdles. Pascoe, who was then a teacher at Dulwich College in London, stretched away in the outside lane after clearing the final hurdle. Christchurch’s famous hospitality was partly to blame for what happened next. Pascoe famously landed on his backside, twice, in trying to jump two hurdles from the wrong side.

‘I took on the two extra hurdles because I wanted to go down the track and wave to my host family,’ he explained. ‘They had Games tickets for one day only and it happened to be the day of my final. I knew they were down at the start of the straight.

‘My tumbles made a difference back home. People had a laugh, it cheered them up.’ Pascoe’s falls were so well received that he was called to speak on Wogan, one of Britain’s most popular television shows, the following day. ‘I had to be very careful with my words,’ he said, ‘because I had been out for a good few drinks to celebrate.

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