British athletics misplaced one among its best servants this week when Don Turner died aged 88.
A high ultra-distance runner in his youth, he went on to develop into treasurer of the Nationwide Union of Observe Statisticians (NUTS) for 22 years and was a long-time volunteer official who specialised in time maintaining.
Along with these duties, he discovered time each week to contribute outcomes to AW and Athletics As we speak magazines and was one among this journal’s busiest and most correct correspondents in the course of the Nineties and switch of the millennium.
A quietly spoken character with a fantastic information of the game, he was the epitome of the phrase ‘gentleman’ and demonstrated his athletics habit by attending main championships in his later years as a part of the travelling military of British followers.
Operating for Epsom & Ewell Harriers, he was runner-up within the London to Brighton race in 1959 and 1962 and third in 1961 and 1963. Within the gruelling Comrades Marathon in South Africa he positioned third in 1962, masking the uphill course in six hours and 7 minutes.
His marathon finest was 2:32:42 in 1968 and he set a world report for six hours on the monitor at Walton in October 1960 when he coated 52 miles and 1100 yards.
After hanging up his Dunlop Crimson Flash plimsolls, he performed a key function organising the timekeeping on the first London Marathon in 1981. He was additionally concerned within the pioneering photo-finish gear at Crystal Palace within the Seventies, a lot in order that he was invited to work for Seiko within the run-up to the Barcelona Olympics.
Even lately he has remained lively. On the Evening of the ten,000m PBs he has been the principle timekeeper, for instance, earlier than rising early the next day to time younger athletes in Epsom.
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