David Bedford

At 74 years old, David Bedford has this physical status:

Bedford was born in London. In the mid-60, at Whitefield school, in Barnet, he used to train during his lunch hours, running up to Golders Hill park and back. It was at Whitefield he was entered in the Inter-counties Orienteering competition. He came in second. He was a leading distance runner during the 1970s. Indeed, he still remains, after more than 50 years, the last English man to have won the International Cross Country Championships (later the World Cross Country Championships) in 1971. However, his greatest achievements were largely against the clock. Despite setting a European record of 27:47.0 on 10th July 1971 at Portsmouth, by a margin of 17 seconds over Jurgen Hasse's record, he suffered in championships due to his lack of a fast final lap. He led for lap after lap in the 1971 European 10,000 m final but still the pack swept past him. He finished sixth to the Flying Finn Juha Väätäinen, who won in a last lap sprint against East Germany's Jürgen Haase. He came twelfth in the 5000 m and sixth in the 10,000 m at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

His later career was hampered by injuries, principally achilles tendonitis, believed to have been caused by his high training mileage. He never ran the great marathon of which many fans thought him capable. He did run the first London Marathon in 1981 but only as the result of a bet. He had been in a nightclub the previous night where David Coleman had remarked on how unwell he looked. Having consumed a curry on the way home from the nightclub, Bedford completed the impromptu marathon but was pictured vomiting at the roadside part way through. However, later in the same year he did manage to win the London Cross Country title at the age of 31.

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