Heroes or Freaks?

Photography by Tom Phillips

Moving Mountains

I’ve reproduced below the text of an article I wrote in 2007 for the UK Masters magazine “The Southerner”. It was well– received, he says modestly, and I thought I’d share it more widely.

Heroes or Freaks?

British sprinter and Riccione relay gold medallist Tom Phillips contemplates age, weight and tables…..

To set the scene:

When I was “nowt but a lad” (about 14, actually), and joined my Club, I can vaguely remember a genial bunch of what we certainly regarded as “old blokes”, who were always there, ran far too slow for our juvenile tastes, and who seemed to have an endless store of anecdotes, advice and athletics mythology. As I approached my own big 4-0, I began to realise that these fellas were doubtless the club’s Vets at that time. They were probably only in their 40s and early 50s. Ancient to we boys, of course.

More recently – well, OK, it was just this March, I was at a club’s AGM, and heard the Head of Active Athletics (is there another sort?) give his report on the budget for running the previous year’s track teams. An elder statesman of the Club stood and commented – not completely tongue in cheek – that he was personally glad to see that none of the money in the budget had gone to the Club’s, albeit highly successful, Masters Teams.

Disconnected events, and I’ve sort of portrayed them out of context here, but they’ve had me thinking about what we are as Masters athletes, and why many people think of us like they do.

The Editor of Athletics Weekly thought I was being unfair a year or so back when I told him I felt his coverage was lamentable, given the growth and success of Masters Athletics. He disagreed with me, but I note a steady trail of letters and comments from others persist, even though there is just a glimmer that he is trying to do something about it. Oh that UK Athletics (is that what they are called this week?) would do likewise. We do get a link to the British Masters Athletics Federation site from somewhere buried deep in the UKA web site, these days. Well, thanks for that, guys.

I was out of our sport for a number of years during my thirties and early forties, due to long term injury. I was also a long time deciding whether to come back at all. I became quite aware of a good range of views about why one should, or shouldn’t, think about becoming a Vet. These tended to portray us in the following ways, either singly or in combination:

· Self-centred has-beens, who’d be far more use devoting all their time to coaching youngsters and running the Club, than searching for their lost youth;

· Genetic freaks who were perhaps to be pitied;

· Gallant, driven, heroes (and heroines), plugging away at their sport in the face of adversity (that is to say, age)

Obsessed objects of amusement who ought to “grow up” (in the pejorative sense);

You’ve been there too. You can add your own.

This was at a time that Masters Athletics, as it had by then become, was rolling out the M35 age group. Remember the opposition to that? Actually, it’s not really gone away, has it? For every athlete I meet in his mid to late thirties who is revelling in remaining competitive in Masters competition, I meet three or four who have variously decided not to bother, are still needed in Senior teams and so can’t spare the time/effort etc, or who have fallen for the mocking, and finally decided to “grow out of it”.

I guess what has really bugged me as a Master, is the absence of a sense of what many aspects of life currently call “parity of esteem”. Against many odds, disability sport seems to be getting there, aided by progressive changes in wider attitudes to ability and access. But does it feel to me, eight years into my Masters career, that what I am, what I do, and what I achieve gets the recognition it would were I thirty years younger? I don’t mean to sound like an attention seeker. I mean “recognition” in the sense of being able to enthuse and inspire, or just plain interest others.

It was an eye-opener to me that the Masters world contains such things as “age-weighted tables”. The science of producing these, and the statistical or actuarial skills involved are both beyond me, and beyond this article. But as a motivational tool, a marker of achievement, and as a potential instrument to move us towards that elusive parity of esteem, I firmly believe that the age-weighted tables have big, and thus-far untapped, potential. Furthermore, it surprises me how many of my compatriots are unaware of these things even now! (If that includes you, just sample http://jick.net/~jess/track/mtf/AGT.php as a taster!)

I made my faltering return as a 46 year old sprinter. I did, of course ponder whether, in purely relative terms, I was anywhere near as competitive as I was as a Senior in my short-lived prime. In that respect, the age-weighted tables were a revelation. No, be honest Tom, actually they were a disappointment to begin with! They said to me “No, you’re not.” However, they have become something of a motivational aid and training tool, by helping chart what improvement I’d have been making in the “real world”, as I improve in this world. When I reached the point that the tables told me I was running better than ever I had, I even thought I should stop wearing my favourite T-shirt, with the logo “The older I get, the faster I was”!

Of course, it’s all make-believe, isn’t it? You run what you actually run, not what a complicated spreadsheet tells you it would be worth in a mythical, in-your-dreams world. I’m enough of a realist to recognise the truth in that. Yet I’m enough of an optimist to feel that we’re missing something here that could do a little to help the status of Masters athletics. Might Joe Public just be a bit more interested, if we could market the fact that, say, Steve Peters’ M50 European record for the 200m (23.22) was worth 19.87 in age-adjusted terms? Follow up the web link above and come up with your own motivational/marketing examples.

Heroes? Freaks? That’s tabloid talk, of course. We’re neither, but lets continue to hold out for that parity of esteem. As the girl on the ads says “Because you’re worth it!”