60th anniversary of Clarke’s first world record – ‘the lowest I felt after any run’

It was by accident, rather than design, that Ron Clarke first added his name to the great pantheon of 10,000m world record breakers.

Sixty years ago today, on the evening of 18 December 1963, the princely Australian front runner “stopped dead on the track”, as he put it, after reaching the six-mile mark inside world record time in the Zatopek 10,000m race at Melbourne Olympic Park.

“My hands fell to my knees as I hunched over, sucking in great draughts of air,” Clarke recalled. “I still had about 380 yards to go to finish the 10,000m and I was just going to jog in. It was only when I heard this big booming voice that I took off.

“It was Neil Robbins, who had helped me early in my career and had flown in from Adelaide because he sensed I was running well enough to break the six mile record.

“He yelled, ‘Fat’…that was the nickname of my brother…’Fat, you’ll break the other one too. Go for it!’

“I’d lost several seconds in stopping, but I still scraped inside the 10,000m record too. It was all thanks to Neil.

“If he hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have broken the 10,000m record because I was concentrating on the six mile time. I thought the 10,000m was unassailable.”

Thus, in his home town – on the track where he fell in the mile race at the 1954 Australian Championships and was famously helped back to his feet by John Landy, who proceeded to win after making up the lost ground – the tall, graceful Clarke announced himself as a serial breaker of world records.

The Melburnian’s six mile time, 27:17.8, was 26 seconds inside the world record figures held by Sandor Iharos of Hungary. His 10,000m time, 28:15.6, sliced 2.6 off the mark set at the previous year’s Soviet Championships by Olympic 10,000m champion Pytor Bolotnikov.

Only Clarke himself bettered the latter performance until Lasse Viren struck gold at the Munich Olympics in 1972 in 27.38.4. Clarke clocked 28.14.0 in Turku in 1965 but the time was not officially recognised because permission for him to participate had not been registered early enough.

In Oslo a month later, he smashed through the 28-minute barrier, running a stunning 27:39.4. That sliced 36.2 seconds off his own record, the greatest single improvement in the history of the 10,000m.

Deflation

After the Melbourne race, Clarke took the train home. His wife, Helen, was holding a farewell party for a close friend.

“I broke two world records tonight,” Clarke told her. “That’s nice,” she replied. “Now make yourself useful and hand out the sandwiches.”

By then, Clarke was already suffering from a disorientating sense of deflation.

“I thought if I broke a world record I’d be walking on Cloud Nine and I wasn’t,” he confessed. “I was the same guy. I was no different.

“Suddenly, a thing I’d been striving for was gone and I felt very disappointed. It was the lowest I felt after any run, after that first world record.”

Five Zatopek victories

It was entirely fitting that Clarke’s breakthrough should have come in a race named after the Czech distance running demi-god whose epic record-breaking deeds he would emulate – and whose respect for him was to lead to one of the most touchingly heartfelt acts in track and field history.

It was Clarke’s third successive victory in the Emil Zatopek 10,000m, which had been founded in 1961 by the Victorian Marathon Club, led by Percy Cerutty, the celebrated coach of 1960 Olympic 1500m champion Herb Elliott. The race still survives today, as the Zatopek:10, and Clarke holds the record number of victories, five.

Like the great Czech soldier before him, the pride of Glenhuntly Athletics Club took distance running into a new dimension.

Clarke was the first man to break 28 minutes for 10,000m and 13 minutes for three miles. He set 17 official world records – at three miles, 5000m, six miles, 10,000m, 10 miles, 20,000m and one hour.

Only one runner before him managed to set global marks in all seven of those events, the immortal Finn Paavo Nurmi. Zatopek broke 18 world records but never managed to crack the three miles.

In November 1963, the best times recorded for 5000m and 10,000m were 13:35.0 and 28:18.2 respectively. Clarke reduced the records to 13:16.6 and 27:39.4.

The status of global track and field ‘Legend’ was posthumously bestowed upon him in February this year with a World Athletics Heritage Plaque that is now on permanent display at Glenhuntly AC in the Melbourne suburb of Murrumbeena.

Inspired by Landy

And yet Ron Clarke would never have become a runner had he not broken a finger while playing Australian rules football, the sport in which his father, Tom, and his brother, Jack, both gained fame as professionals with the Essendon club. The bone was reset at a right-angle, rather than being amputated, meaning he could no longer catch a ball.

Early in 1956 the 18-year-old Ron made his mark on the track, setting world U20 records at 1500m (3:49.8), the mile (4:06.8) and two miles (9:01.8) as an 18-year-old. He was inspired by the words of Landy, the second man to run a sub-four-minute mile.

“I wrote to him for advice and received a five-page letter,” Clarke recalled. “He wrote, ‘I’m sorry I’m on my way overseas so this’ll be just a short note’… and it went on for five pages.

“That’s the sort of guy Landy was – always wanting to help other runners. Just like Zatopek.”

‘Reimagining of distance running’

The “boy wonder” Clarke didn’t gain selection for the host nation for the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 but was chosen to light the flame at the Opening Ceremony instead. He inadvertently sparked the torch and burned his arm with flaming magnesium – a taste of the pain to come in the Olympic arena.

Unlike Zatopek, who followed up 10,000m victory in London in 1948 with his ground-breaking 5000m-10,000-marathon treble in Helsinki in 1952, Clarke never managed to claim Olympic gold.

In Tokyo in 1964 he took bronze in the 10,000m in the wake of Billy Mills’ charge to unexpected victory. In the dangerously thin air of Mexico City four years later, a mile and a half above sea level, he pushed himself to the absolute limit to finish sixth in the 10,000m final.

Clarke collapsed as he crossed the line. His heart stopped.

He was unconscious for 10 minutes before being revived with an oxygen canister administered by Brian Corrigan, an Australian doctor friend who jumped the perimeter moat and fought off several policemen to save his life.

Clarke ran in the 5000m final four days later, finishing fifth, but suffered lasting damage. In 1981 he underwent open heart surgery to repair a leaking valve.

He hung up his spikes after one final crack at international championship gold, losing out in a sprint finish to an inspired Lachie Stewart in the 10,000m at the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. It was his fourth Commonwealth silver.

In later life Clarke served for eight years as Mayor of the Gold Coast. He died in 2015, aged 78, but his refreshing front-running free spirit lingers on.

“I loved testing myself more than I feared being beaten, and front running is the ultimate test,” he insisted. “I enjoyed it enormously and if I didn’t win gold medals then so be it. I had a go. I did my best.”

As Len Johnson – the eloquent voice of Australian athletics, long-time track and field correspondent of The Age, sub 2:20 marathoner and fellow product of Glenhuntly AC – put it: “Ron Clarke’s lack of a gold medal stands for nought against his reimagining of distance running.”

Clarke might never have managed to find a Midas touch on the track but he inherited a chunk of his indomitable spirit and determination from his gold-mining great-grandfather.

In the tragic Australasian Gold Mine disaster of 1882, which claimed 22 lives, Thomas Clarke spent 53 hours pumping water out of the flooded shafts and tunnels. He saved the lives of five colleagues and was hailed as a hero in the state of Victoria and beyond.

‘You deserve it’

Not that Ron ended his running career without a gold medal.

On a tour of Europe in the summer of 1966, he was invited to visit Zatopek in Prague. He ran with the great man in the woods surrounding Houst’ka Stadium in Stara Boleslav, where Zatopek set a trio of world records in 1952.

When Zatopek dropped him off at the airport in Prague, he thrust a brown paper package into Clarke’s hands, saying, “Not out of friendship, but because you deserve it.”

When the plane was airborne, Clarke retired to the privacy of the lavatory and unwrapped the box.

“There, inscribed with my name and that day’s date, was Emil’s 10,000m gold medal,” he recounted. “I sat on that toilet seat and wept.”

Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage