There are 42 excellent interesting and thought provoking pictures and documents on our Hugh’s Gems pages.   Hugh Barrow is an outstanding Scottish sports historian and a former top class miler and his selections are usually classics.   This is the start of his second selection.

Starting this group with a French touch –

From A.W.   Everybody’s hero –  look at the DoB!!!   Dou your sums.   Frightening how recent it all seems.

Now an original marked programme for a significant race!

Herb Elliott in the Blue Jacket with Trevor   and Jack Davey who ran in the 1960 Empire Games.

If you had a copy now, it would probably be quite valuable: note that it was put out by a commercial organisation.

The cover and the relevant inside pages from the London Meeting between London and New York, and Rome.

This one is self explanatory 

How about this picture of the Rangers Sports in the late 50’s?   Note that there is a 5 a side taking place, the grass track marked for the 100 yards complete with markers for the handicaps, the podium ready for the starter, markings on the outer track, etc.

American college coaches are known for keeping their eye on up and coming talent – it’s their living after all – and some do come on stronlg to the athletes they want.   The best don’t have to do that: have a look at this letter that Hugh has spotted:

 

A prominent English coach said at one time that there was room for invitation middle distance races at football matches where there were big crowds and where there was a need for pre-match and half-time entertainment.   Hugh promptly pointed out that such races had been held in Scotland for many years – he had run in quite a few himself!   The first picture below feres to onesuch race:

 

.Next we have a Scotsman involved in a  close victory – the caption tells the story

Jock Semple was one of the main organisers of the Boston Marathon working on it – and his business as a physiotherapist – right up to the year before he died.   He was in Scotland almost every two years and he appears in the next photo when he went to see the Luddon half marathon.

Staying with the Luddon – a very successful race organised and master minded by Hugh – we have the start of the race with many well-kent runners clearly shown.

Hugh was, is and always will be a proud member of the Victoria Park AAC, having run with the club when it was flying high as probably the top club in the land.   He certainly ran with Ian Binnie and the two pages below are from the programme at Cowal when Binnie smashed the Scottish 10 mile and one hour records, and just about every other on the way.

If you are a regular user of the website, you’ll know at least one of these …

Signatures from Emil Zatopek and his wife 

 

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