IT IS 2am on Sunday, March 29, 1981, and David Bedford, one of the most popular and well-known athletes of his generation, is still enjoying a long night of drink and Indian food. In around seven hours’ time, London is about to be transformed into the centre of the athletics world. It is the morning of the capital’s first marathon and Bedford has decided he would like to take part.

Unlike today, when entries have to be signed, sealed and delivered months in advance, Bedford rings race organiser Chris Brasher in those early hours and the man who devised an event that has become a phenomenon has no trouble allowing one of the country’s finest distance runners a place.

“I cannot remember much about the race,” recalls Bedford. But he made it home, worse for wear and without the contents of the previous evening’s entertainment, which were duly dispatched by the side of the road on Westminster Bridge.

Twenty-seven years later, the Flora London Marathon, taking place this year on April 13, is now a major part of Bedford’s life. He is the international race director, putting together some of the best fields in the world for an event that has gained him arguably as great a reputation as his flamboyant running career. In the early 1970s, there was no athlete as recognisable as Bedford, with his droopy moustache and his ability to thrill. It is still much the same today. Five years ago, he was embroiled in a legal battle with the telephone directory company 118 118 over claims that the two runners in their adverts were modelled on Bedford’s distinctive tash.

Unlike now, when tickets for an athletics meeting can be a hard sell, the presence of Bedford would be incentive enough to be at Crystal Palace. Never more so than in July 1973, when he celebrated his greatest athletic achievement, breaking the 10,000m world record with a run of 27min 30.80sec, a time that lasted for almost four years. Twelve months earlier, he had encouraged the nation to watch him win a gold medal at the Olympic Games in Munich before finishing 12th in the 5000m and sixth in the 10,000m.

But watch they did. Now, as then, he hopes they might listen because the curse of drugs in the sport is fast moving out of control.

Bedford, 58, never made it to the podium at a major championships, but he has never been short of an opinion. Without a blink, his views of the disgraced sprinter Dwain Chambers put on the record what many in the sport have been muttering since Chambers announced that he is attempting a second comeback.

Bedford has worked for the London Marathon since 1989, rising to the director’s role as the event has evolved. While the race is oversubscribed in its thousands each year, track and field has paid the price for the cheats. Television viewing figures have tumbled and Bedford believes the sport has to do something about it.

“Track and field is in a crisis situation,” he says. “We have already seen over the past 10-15 years a complete lack of belief in the general public that anything they are seeing is valid, with a view that ‘they probably are all at it’.

“We have had a cycle where the so-called draconian views of 25 years ago, which is ‘life ban if you get caught’, has been eased back to a penalty that has acted as little or no discouragement at all to people.

“The two-year ban is something that indicates that the people who run the sport don’t take doping control that seriously and, from time to time, you might have to do a couple of years. But the sport will welcome you back.

“A civilian’s argument is that if you get done for drinking and driving you might not have to drive your car for a year and there are people who take occasional chances. If it was a life ban, nobody would even consider it because the penalty is so strong that it would have that effect.”

The 1970s was a period when East German athletes were at the centre of drug claims that have since been proven. Additionally, Bedford’s two Olympic defeats came in races won by the legendary Finnish star Lasse Viren, who has regularly been linked with allegations of blood doping, which was not made illegal until the mid1980s.

The London Marathon has remained a powerful force in ensuring this form of racing stays clean. “Marathon running has been lucky because it has hardly been affected by any of the drug problems that track and field has had,” says Bedford. “I would like to think that the strong stance the London Marathon has had over the years, including introducing blood testing prior to the event as well as on race day, and urging colleagues in world marathon majors to do the same, has been significant.

“There is activity where we work quietly with the IAAF to ensure that out-of-competition testing happens to our competitors.”

“Quiet” might not be a word often associated with David Bedford, and if he has his way, it will not be the case in Sheffield this afternoon. He would welcome nothing more than a chorus of loud boos for the appearance of Chambers, self-confessed drugs cheat.