John Walker is pictured above at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games.
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The first time that John Walker broke an existing World Record, he was
not the winner of the race. The occasion was the 1500m final at the
1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch in February 1974. Filbert Bayi,
from Tanzania, in a superb display of front running, led all the way
winning in a time of 3min 32.2 sec with Walker only 0.3 sec behind.
Both Bayi and Walker finished inside Jim Ryun's World Record. However,
it didn't take John Walker long to start setting World Records in his
own right. At Gothenburg, Sweden in August 1975, he not only broke the
World Record for the mile, but also became the first man to run that
distance under 3min 50sec with a time of 3min 49.4sec. He followed this
with a superb 4min 51.52sec for 2000m at Oslo in June 1976, slicing
nearly five seconds off the existing World Record. Four weeks later at
the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal Walker proved that not only could he
produce world class times, but that he could race against world class
competition as well.
The 1500m final started at a very pedestrian pace,
and it took 3min 01.2sec for the field to dawdle to the 1200m mark,
reached with Eamonn Coghlan (IRL) in the lead with Walker at his
shoulder. Walker then unleashed a sustained sprint for the tape,
finishing first in a time of 3min 39.2sec with the final 300m covered in
a staggering 37.9sec. Despite Walker's many successes during the
1970s, the decade finished on a somewhat sour note for him. He missed
the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Edmonton through injury, and was denied
the opportunity to defend his 1500m Olympic crown when New Zealand
joined the boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. (Ron Casey)
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Photo of John Walker taken by George Herringshaw on 4th. August 1990 ©.
1980-90. Silver at 1982 Commonwealth's.
The
1980s saw John Walker continue the world-class form in middle distance
running he had established during the 1970s, and lay claim to arguably
be the most durable athlete in history competing at the international
level over middle distances. At Oslo in July 1982, Walker ran his
lifetime best for the mile of 3min 49.08sec. He followed this
performance three months later with a silver medal in the 1500m behind
Steve Cram at the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane. He ran ninth in the
1500m at the inaugural IAAF World Championships in Helsinki in 1983, and
the following year, at the Los Angeles Olympic Games, he ran eighth in
the final of the 5000m, suggesting that his future might lie at this
longer distance.
However, Walker continued to produce quality
performances at the shorter distances, and it gradually became apparent
to statisticians and the media that his lifetime tally of sub
four-minute miles was slowly approaching 100. He reached this milestone
at Auckland on 17 February 1985 over eleven and a half years after
achieving his first sub four-minute mile at Vancouver on 7 July 1973.
In 1986, he ran fifth in the 5000m at the 1986 Edinburgh Commonwealth
Games, a championships sadly marred by the boycott of 32 nations. A few
weeks earlier he had recorded his lifetime best for that distance of
13min 19.28sec at Cork. Unfortunately, Walker’s international career
had a rather sad ending. Having qualified for the final of the 1990
Commonwealth Games 1500m on his home track in Auckland, he tripped on
the first lap, before carrying on to finish a distant last. (Ron Casey)
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