From Last to First: A long-distance runner's journey from failure to success

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The year was 1975 and Charlie was only 23 with, as he puts it, "no evidence of what was to come" - but nine years later he stood on the Olympic medal rostrum. I might easily have run in the 10,000 metres myself if I'd blown up in Houston. But as it was Mike finished third in the final and ended up with the silver medal when the Finn Martti Vainio was found to be a drugs cheat and I ran the race of my life in the marathon." The build-up to his glory run had been extremely difficult - the aftermath a glorious party shared with the world.

Dunn’s coaching CV reads like a who’s who of British distance running. From 1980s icons like Barry Smith and Geoff Turnbull through to Dominic Bannister, Tom Mayo, Andy Caine and Mike Openshaw, plus current runners like Chris Parr and Carl Avery. He even helped Benita Willis, the 2004 world cross-country champion from Australia, for a spell. Indeed, even in his final few weeks he was heard to be following news from the English National Cross Country Championships on social media from his hospital bed. A horrible thought occurs about this “New Normal”— there is no reason for our Betters ever to terminate their mask-wearing rules.

Brendan Foster and Charlie Spedding on the impact Dunn had on their lives and the wider sport following the coaching legend’s death aged 77

Treacy was beside me. I glanced behind and Joseph Nzau was fading away. I just had that moment where it hit me. I’m going to win a medal. Then immediately, I thought: “Only if I can keep this going for three miles.” I just put it out of my mind completely and it was just a matter of getting to the finish as fast as I could. I just concentrated on that. Now, the job of carrying on his legacy has fallen to Nathan Shrubb. The North East runner says it was “an honour and privilege” for Dunn to accept him into his coaching group a few years ago and he has since started to lead the sessions for Dunn’s squad – a group of runners known as ‘The LD Crew’.

To most he needs no introduction. But to those who weren’t around in the 80s or new to running, Charlie Spedding the athlete can be summed up in one unquestionable sentence: I hammered as hard as I could in the tunnel and was right behind him going down the home straight. The noise the whole way around was extraordinary but we had a whole lap to do after that. I think I’d used up whatever finish I had catching him, although I ended up only two seconds behind. You can have your fitness and your talent but, quite often, it comes down to being in a pressure situation and you have to decide what to do at that moment. Those were the two moments that made that race as successful as it was for me. Whereas proper nutrition is the most important single requirement for health, governments and corporations – aided by universities and scientists – have been grossly misinforming people for 60-70 years, telling them to avoid healthy foods and consume unhealthy ones.

This was my first Olympics. I was 32 years old. Beforehand, the one thing I said that I must not do is finish the race thinking: “I wish I’d done this.” Later on, when we got to about 21-22 miles, I’d expected De Castella or somebody to push really hard. I was mentally ready for it but I looked around the group and no one else was going to push.

After the age of 21, in effect we start to die because we are, in evolutionary terms, no longer required for reproduction (fertility peaks in late teens) and are just competition for scarce food resources with the new crop of Humans. There is a ‘kill gene’. The rest of Jones's career contained more ups and downs. In 1987 he came second in the Boston Marathon, but was annoyed with himself for letting Japan's Toshihiko Seko get away from him. In 1988 JOnes won the New York Marathon and in 1992 the Toronto Marathon, the latter as a 37-year-old; major championship success would continue to allude him though, his fourth-place finish in the 1990 Commonwealth Games marathon proving his last chance, although Jones was still good enough to finish 13th in the 1993 World Championships, even though his best years were behind him. Emelyanov is just the latest name in a long list of Russian race walkers to be caught doping (number 17, to be exact). They've all walked under once esteemed Russian coach Viktor Chegin, who now seems to have lost whatever protection he was getting from the Russian authorities. On Dunn’s qualities, Spedding added: “He was a good runner but a fabulous coach. He got better as the years went on. He never thought he knew everything. He always wanted to learn more. He was extremely good at looking at someone’s training diary and realising what worked for them and what didn’t. He would have runners of similar abilities but doing different training and yet getting the best out of both of them. These included Foster, who he helped win European and Commonwealth 5000m titles. Dunn was born in Richmond in North Yorkshire but moved to Leeds and shared a flat with Foster and the pair became training partners and lifelong friends.In November 2019 he published a book Stop Feeding Us Lies: How Health and Happiness Come to Those Who Seek the Truth which examines dietary recommendations and lifestyle approaches which he analyses as being causes of high levels of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other illnesses. No one went crazy at the start which was good because it was pretty hot," recalled Charlie. "I got to 20 kilometres and was waiting for de Castella to make his move but when I looked round he wasn't even there and I thought it was time to get rid of some of the others so I started shaking it up. Jones powered home, his eventual time of 2:08:16 setting a course record that would stand until 1997. Such was the quality of the running on the day, that Spedding's time of 2:08:33 was 84 seconds faster than the Englishman had ever run before, with third-placed Allister Hutton improving on his personal best time by some seven minutes. It also says a lot about the British athletes of yesteryear, and today unfortunately, that the marks set by Spedding and Hutton still stand as English and Scottish records to this day, a reflection on both their abilities and the shortage in top-quality marathon runners from Britain in the last 30 years or so. We had to put our winnings in a trust fund for when we retired," explained Spedding. "If we wanted to dip into it we had to satisfy the trustees that everything was pukka. Covid 19 science? Summed up by one SAGE interviewed: “I’m scared, better safe than sorry, I want to hide”– everyone must be compelled to emulate her

I eventually got where I wanted to be. I ran in two Olympics - I was sixth in Seoul - and I competed in four London Marathons. I'm proud of my record."This is a very typical example and the MSM are always happy to augment it and add to the fearmongering. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/boris-johnson-says-he-wants-to-relax-2-metre-physical-distancing-rule However, when it was all over we had the best medal presentation of all because it marked the beginning of the closing ceremony. The London men's winner of 1984 is confident that Paula Radcliffe will emerge as a British winner in the women's race of 2005, though he is not so sure about the impact of a third marathon in eight months upon the long-term future of the world record-holder. "You can only go to the well so many times, and running the marathon really is going to the well," Spedding pondered. "Even if you are the best in the world, it takes an awful lot out of you. And I just worry that running another one now is maybe just diminishing Paula's chances of making sure she wins gold in a major championship." Just 24 hours before the 1985 London Marathon, Jones lost his world record to Portugal's Carlos Lopes, who won the Rotterdam Marathon in 2:07:12, though Jones would be preoccupied with the threat of Charlie Spedding to be overly concerned at losing his record.