Nick Westby: Marathon aims of Farah should add deserved box-office appeal

If it is not a tale of endeavour that tugs on the heart strings or a star athlete needing a pee, then marathons get about as much air time as racquetball.

That is not to say marathons don’t appeal to the masses.

Completing a 26.2-mile race is the target many a club runner or layabout sloth set themselves, either to raise money for charity or fulfil a lifelong ambition to run the ultimate sporting test.

But at elite level the cupboard has been relatively bare since Paula Radcliffe stopped covering the streets and headed into the comfort of the pundit’s chair.

Until, that is, two stories came along in the last few days that could result in an upturn in interest in the great test of the most basic tenet of human exertion.

The first was Mo Farah, the double Olympic and world champion over the long distances on the track, saying that the next big challenge on his radar was to complete the London Marathon next April.

I say complete it, merely crossing the line is not enough for arguably Britain’s greatest endurance athlete, who is hoping to threaten the world record which currently stands at two hours three minutes and 23 seconds.

Rumours that he has spoken about breaking the mythical two-hour barrier proved false and originated because his shoe manufacturer Nike are looking to promote their next running shoe called the ‘Sub Two-Hour’.

If Farah proves a success on his marathon bow in the capital next summer and decides to stick at the distance with the Rio Olympics in mind, his box-office appeal will help introduce marathon running to a new audience, and give those who devote hour upon hour of running on the open road, a new star to aspire to.

The second story unfolded yesterday right here on our doorstep in York, when the inaugural Plusnet Yorkshire Marathon was run by the usual mix of seniors, juniors, some guy in a Police constable’s outfit and a band of elite athletes.

To see a full marathon in the White Rose county was a joy to behold.

As mass participation events go, there is nothing that unites a sporting public quite like a race that takes most competitors nearly four hours and is run by people either grimacing in pain or smiling at the crowd.

Dare I say, it was the Olympic legacy in action, the birth of what could become a major sporting event in this county a little over 12 months on from the most memorable sporting summer of all.

At elite level, it was good to see some promising Yorkshire athletes testing themselves against a collection of the finest African runners in the world so close to home.

Among them was Doncaster-born, Leeds-based runner Jocelyn Payne, 23, who is one of the rising stars of endurance running in the country and the fourth fastest British under-23 woman in history.

When I spoke to her last week to preview the Yorkshire Marathon, she offered some words of advice for Farah, something a relative novice in most other sports would never dare give to a national icon.

Yet such is the difference in the step up from 10,000 metres on the track to 26.2 miles on the road, that the contrast in approach and execution should not be taken lightly, not that I, Payne or anyone thinks an athlete who prepares as thoroughly as Farah would not appreciate 
that.

“It’s different because he’s come in from a fast track runners’ background and he’s learning to develop that endurance and for a lot of people, that’s hard to understand,” says Payne, who has so much devloping to do in her own marathon career that it is the Tokyo Olympics of 2020 on her radar rather than Rio.

“I came from a jogger’s background, and for me now the distance and endurance is not a problem, it’s the speed you have to work on.

“So Mo needs to get his head around the endurance element.

“I think it’s great he’s doing it though. He’s really raising the profile of marathon running in Britain, which is important because we’ve had a lot of great women runners like Paula in recent years, Liz Yelling etc, but with the men there’s not that depth of elite male marathon runners.”

She will have been encouraged to see so many budding young marathon runners in the elite race yesterday; their eyes bulging in determination, every fibre of their being straining to get that next footfall closer to the finish line.

As I stood and watched I gained a new-found respect. The art of running is as natural a sporting instinct as humans are born with, and along with all the other sports I have failed at, putting one foot in front of the other at speed is another that proved beyond me.

I tried distance-running once. I say distance, it was a 10k around Graves Park in Sheffield.

My time was around the 52-minute mark and as I breasted the tape, my arms outstretched, the commentator’s voice in my head screeched that I had just smashed the Olympic, Commonwealth and world record.

I hadn’t, of course, but I had at least lowered the mark I’d been running on the treadmill at the gym and for that I was chuffed...right up until word reached the group of panting amateurs that the course organisers had accidentally missed a corner and the length of the 10k was in fact 8.5k. Chastened, humiliated, my competitive running career was over.

Yet as I watched the athletes starting out from the University of York yesterday; the focused stares of the Kenyan stars and the enthusiatic expressions of the club runners, I felt a sense of envy that I wasn’t part of the great tapestry of the marathon.

It is the sport that unites the do-wells with the try-hards.

and another thing...

Forget the ‘World’ Superbike Championship, it should be referred to as Yorkshire’s World Superbike Championship, such is the form the county has shown over the last decade.

Huddersfield’s Tom Sykes won the world title yesterday, making it three championship wins for Yorkshire from the last 10 seasons.

Doncaster’s James Toseland was the man to beat in 2004 and again three years later.

Where he came unstuck was making the step up to the top rung of the motorcyling ladder – MotoGP.

Toseland could never break the glass ceiling on his Yamaha Tech 3 and struggled to make an impact in his two years.

Cal Crutchlow has shown better adaptability to the elite level but the search for a first British winner of MotoGP since Barry Sheene in 1977 goes on.

In the 36 years since Sheene’s last title, Britain has boasted four Formula 1 world champions in Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.

The question now for World Superbikes champion Sykes is whether he wants to step up to MotoGP and take on the challenge of being the man to end British motorcycling’s long wait to boast the best of the best.