Steve Jones is not exactly a household name despite winning three of the top five city marathons in the world. The telephone receptionist at the London hotel in which he is staying asked how to spell his surname. Two assistants helping to register runners for today’s London event had never heard of him. The loneliness of a long-distance runner.
Jones has never sought fame or fortune. He describes himself as a “blue-collar runner”, and many people would regard him as the archetypal runner’s runner, all blood and guts. However, during a one-year spell in the mid1980s, he put his name on the marathon map by winning twice in Chicago and once in London. Nobody could touch him.
His road to glory started in the Welsh town of Ebbw Vale in 1970. As a 15-year old, he began running cross-country. It was his first athletic discipline and still his fondest love. “I wasn’t a great academic,” he says. “My tools were my hands. I was always taking things apart and trying to put them back together again. Running, although it was hard, felt the most natural thing I had done.”
He joined the air force as a technician tuning jet fighters at RAF Lyneham and showed enough promise as a runner to enter the 1976 Welsh cross-country championships. “I wasn’t well known in Wales because I was living across the water, so to speak. Now it is the other way round. They are looking over the water for people with Welsh corgis or people who went to Barry Island for a holiday so they can enlist them in the Welsh squad.”
Jones finished seventh; surprisingly, he was not chosen for the nine-man team or included among the three reserves for the world championships. “It fuelled the fire,” he says. “When things like that happened at various stages in my running career, they inspired me to move on to the next step. I vowed that the next year they would have to pick me.” In typical fashion, he won the next year. It was the first of a record nine titles in the event.
Success at cross-country and on the track took him inexorably towards his first marathon. The year was 1983. The venue was Chicago. The result was a disaster. He tore a tendon on the night before the race but decided to run and was among the leaders until he pulled out after 17 miles. “Bob Bright, the race director, paid me some expense money. After the race I tried to return the cheque. He said they didn’t do things like that and I should come back the next year.”
The next year Bright, a flamboyant promoter in the mould of Don King, set up the Chicago race as a clash between the world champion, Robert de Castella, of Australia, and his Portuguese rival Carlos Lopes, the Olympic champion. “They were the two prime athletes in the race and I needed to be around them for as long as possible,” Jones recalls. “Outside of Carlos, I was the fastest 10km runner in the field by quite a way. So if I got to 20 miles with Rob, I would have a chance.”
Jones was in a large leading bunch when they reached 18 miles. There was a sharp left turn and a water station on the corner. Gabriel Kamau, a Kenyan, cut across the pack to get a drink and Geoff Smith clipped his heel. Kamau fell, got up and sprinted ahead. Jones, who had never run this far, chased him and took the lead, drawing away from his pursuers.
With two miles to go, Chris Brasher, riding in the press truck, called to Jones that if he ran two five-minute miles, he would break the record. Jones thought he meant the course record – “I didn’t even know what the world record was.” He beat De Castella’s world best by 13 seconds, winning in 2hr 8min 5sec.
“I had won races in Cardiff, Barry, Merthyr Tydfil and around the country and halfway round the world, but nobody had made a fuss like this before. As much as you don’t want it to, my life changed. We had to get an answering machine because the phone kept ringing. A Japanese journalist called from Italy asking if he could interview me. I told him I had done enough interviews. Two days later, he was on my doorstep. For about three months I didn’t do much except go to functions and do interviews.”
Six months later Jones was on the start line alongside Gateshead runner Charlie Spedding for the London Marathon. Spedding, who had won an Olympic medal, was regarded as the purist and Jones as the bad boy. Colin Woodward, a Derby runner, set a brisk pace, but Jones was not feeling well. “I had a bad stomach and was concentrating so hard that I don’t even remember the miles ticking by. With my stomach cramp, I would focus on somebody’s feet.” One by one, the runners dropped off the pace. With about five miles to go, it became a two-man race between Jones and Spedding.
They reached the Tower of London. “I told Charlie I wasn’t feeling too good and asked him what I should do. He said: ‘Stop running’. That was typical of Charlie’s humour.”
Jones needed to relieve himself. “I was tugging at my shorts and the TV commentators thought I had cramp. They said: ‘Spedding’s got a gap now, Jones is holding his hamstring’. The cameras went off me and on to Charlie, so I scooted away and did my business where the Beefeater stood at the entrance to the Tower.” Spedding had opened up a gap, but a relieved Jones scampered after the leader and quickly caught him.
They approached an underpass heading towards the Embankment when Jones heard a supporter shout: “C’mon Ebbw Vale.” Inspired by the mention of his home-town, he put in a spurt and came out of the tunnel 10 seconds ahead. The race was over. He won in 2:08.16. “The disappointing thing for Charlie was that he ran 2:08.32 and got second. It was tough for him to comprehend. Not only did he get second, he got second behind a Brit . . . and a Welshman at that.”
Jones completed the treble in Chicago in 1985 when he burst away at the start and won the fastest marathon by a Briton in 2:07.13, only one second slower than the world record held by Lopes. He completed the half-marathon in a blistering 61min 42sec, but did not realise how close he was to improving the world marathon record. “I am sure down the years it cost me a lot of money, but the important thing was that I ran the race my way. I didn’t let anybody dictate the pace to me, or alter my strategy. It doesn’t happen very often, but it happened in all three races. The one second has never bothered me; everybody else made more of a fuss than I did.” He had learnt one lesson, though. He began wearing a stopwatch.
Jones started 18 competitive marathons in his career and failed to finish only once, in his first race. He won five, including New York in 1988 and Toronto in 1992, and was in the top 10 in 11 races.
In 1990 he moved to America, where he now lives. He paints houses in Boulder, Colorado, and works for Reebok as a consultant ambassador. He coaches local athletes and still runs because “you need to lead by example and create the right impression”.
Does he realise that he still holds the four fastest marathon times for British runners? “I suppose I do,” he says, almost surprised. “Isn’t that sad? I think that is very sad.”
Looking at the list of top 10 ranked marathoners, which includes Ron Hill from 1970 and Ian Thomson from 1974, Jones has an answer for the lack of modern talent: “We had each other to inspire us. We would look up to Ron Hill and Ian Thomp-son and want to be like them. We were lucky enough to be able to compete against them as well.
“Now we don’t have any running magazines. We have lifestyle magazines, not hard-core running magazines, which is what you need to inspire the youngsters. They don’t want to read about knocking three seconds off your best time by having this for breakfast or walking 10 more miles to lose 500 more calories. They want to read about the top athletes in the world.”
ESPN Classic, Sky channel 442, will show Great Sporting Duels – Ethiopian and Kenyan long-distance rivals, at 9pm today
