Eldon - Life on the Run

Title page

LIFE ON THE RUN

Stan Eldon

ARTHUR H. STOCKWELL LTD.

Elms Court Ilfracombe Devon

Established 1898

Publisher information

Stan Eldon, 2002

First published in Great Britain, 2002

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder.

Arthur H. Stockwell Ltd., bear no responsibility for the accuracy of events recorded in this book.

Dedication

The book is dedicated to my parents, my wife of forty-four years Marion, my family and those women in my life I have mentioned in this book.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the following for the use of photographs, newpaper extracts and cartoons used in this book.

E. D. Lacey, photographer ; The Times; The Sunday Times; Daily Express; Sunday Express; The Telegraph; News of the World; London Evening News; Reading Evening Post; Reading Chronicle; Windsor Express; Athletics Weekly; Len Runyard ; Keystone Press Agency .

Thanks also to all those who have helped to make my sporting life so interesting and full, and who have directly or indirectly helped me to put this book together.

Foreword

By Len Runyard, formerly Hon. Secretary, Eton AC, Windsor and Eton AC, and Windsor, Slough and Eton AC.

I have much pleasure in writing this foreword to, Life on the Run . When I joined the Eton AC, over fifty years ago, there was a small band of very enthusiastic young athletes who coped extremely well despite a complete lack of facilities. One of these was the fourteen years old Stan Eldon, a pupil from the Windsor Boys Grammar School. Even at this stage of his athletic career, his potential was obviously outstanding, while apart from this, his enthusiasm and dedication to athletics was boundless. Essentially, I remember him as a cooperative, keen and loyal club member and a very generous natured and nice person; he hasnt changed in the interim!

In 1952 the club moved to Windsor and became Windsor and Eton AC, it was under this name that Stan gained his great athletic reputation. In 1954 he was called up for two years National Service in the Army. Each week, whether it be track, road or cross-country races, Army duties allowing, Stan would travel considerable distances to represent the club. It is worth remembering that in those days, athletes were completely amateur and paid their own expenses! With increasing fame, Stan was pursued by several leading athletic clubs, but he always refused the offer, and remained completely loyal to his small town club (happily no longer small, and now one of the major clubs in the country). After leaving the Army in 1956, he joined the police force, which because of the long working hours, made training difficult, but somehow Stan coped and continued to run his way to the top.

It is impossible for me to list all his many achievements, so I will restrict myself to picking out one special success which was winning the Southern Counties Three Mile Championship, which was held at the Hurlingham track in London, in June 1957. Unable to obtain the necessary time off, he was on traffic duty at the Royal Ascot races on an extremely hot day. As a concession he was allowed to leave an hour early at 1 p.m., after which he had to rush back home to wash, have a meal, and then get to Hurlingham track ready for a 4.30 p.m. start. I was waiting for him by the entrance, and getting more and more anxious as the minutes ticked away. Suddenly, at 4.10 p.m., he came rushing up asking Am I too late? He barely had time to do no more than just jog up the track, plus a few bursts of speed before being called to the start. Taking the lead immediately, he raced away to easily win the title, well ahead of the second runner, and breaking the six mile championship record by over a minute!

The year 1958 was special for Stan, for after brilliantly winning the International Cross-Country Championship, at the age of twenty-one years, he had a series of major wins on the track, including the AAA three mile and six mile titles. However 1959 was his special season (if only the Olympic Games had been held in that year, for in 1960 he was plagued by illness). After winning many of the major distance races in Europe, he was later honoured by being selected as the World Athlete of the Year by the prestigious Society of USA Athletic Statisticians. Only three other British athletes have been so chosen; Roger Bannister, Seb Coe and Jonathan Edwards.

The rest of his athletic career is now part of athletic history. Stan, indeed, has devoted his life to the furtherance of athletics and he is still actively coaching and advising today; he was (and still is) the Best in British athletics!

Chapter One: The Early Years

I was born on 1 st May 1936 in Windsor. My father was a retired soldier and had been stationed in Combermere Barracks, Windsor, the home of the Household Cavalry, and that is how I ended up being born in the Royal Borough. My mother, Flora Ivy Tremaine Marshall, had left her home in Tisbury, Wiltshire, where she was one of fifteen children and went to Windsor as parlour maid to the then Dean of Windsor in Windsor Castle at the age of fourteen years. My parents were married in Tisbury on 25 th August 1934, when she was twenty-eight, and described on the marriage certificate as a cook; and he was forty-seven years old and listed as a salesman. Their respective fathers, Uriah Marshall, retired insurance agent, and Francis Howard Eldon, retired drayman.

My father, William Frank Eldon, was born at Eton on 18 th October 1886 and had enlisted in the Army at the age of fourteen years (he should have been fifteen) in 1900 during the Boer War in South Africa. His father was wounded serving there and his wife took advantage of the free passages for the wives of wounded soldiers, and Dad signed up as a bugle boy so that he could go out as well. As he falsified his birth date, he had two birthdays for the rest of his life. His family also had various spellings of the surname, and when he was born, his birth certificate had his name as ALDEN, but the family had generally accepted ELDON or ELDEN, and when he joined up, he had to select one permanent name, so he settled on ELDON, although his brother and sister kept with ELDEN. Uncertain spellings of surnames were apparently quite common at this time. After he returned from that war, he signed up for the real Army in 1903. He joined the Royal Field Artillery, probably because he had grown up with horses working with his father on the brewers drays, and horses were still very much in use to pull the guns by the artillery in the early part of the Great War. He went to India and was a sergeant car driver for King George V and Queen Mary on their Coronation Tour of the country in 1911, for which he was awarded a specially engraved Coronation Medal. While in India, he was a British Army Boxing Champion. He then went off to fight in the First World War and was wounded in 1915 and returned to Windsor, where he helped to train the Household Cavalry in horsemanship.

According to his Army discharge papers, he was a 3 rd Class Gymnast; obviously not very good, and something that I must have inherited, as gymnastics was never one of my strong activities, but he was a 1 st Class Equestrian. He left the Army in 1918 when he had completed fifteen years service; twelve years with the Colours and three years in the Army Reserve, and settled in Windsor. He kept up his interest in boxing and often went to the Star and Garter Gym in Peascod Street, Windsor, where all the great champions trained right up to Sugar Ray Robinson in 1952. My father was a strange mixture; brought up as a Wesleyan or Methodist, he never touched alcohol and in spite of his years in the Army as a sergeant, I never heard him swear; and I mean never. On the other hand, he had been a smoker from the age of about ten, starting off on Woodbines and progressing to Players, and about twenty a day. He smoked all his life until his death age eighty-eight years in 1974. Because he smoked, none of his children have ever smoked and I have never even tried a drag behind the bike sheds.