Holmes bid rekindles flame of humble hill

14 April 2012

It seemed fair to ask Kelly Holmes if she had ever heard of Albert Hill. "Albert who?" she wondered aloud and she would not have been alone.

This grand English name doesn't resonate through the pages of sporting history like that of, say, Abrahams or Coe yet there's an argument that a humble railway ticket collector from Tooting who won two gold medals while on a training diet of lager and while struggling with injury actually wrote the greatest Olympic story of any British track athlete.

So it's good to see that the exploits of Holmes have brought the glory of a forgotten hero back to the table. If Holmes wins the 1500 metres title tomorrow she will become the first Briton to achieve the 800m-1500m double since this feisty Londoner Hill did so in the 1920 Antwerp Games.

In this tale of two eras, Holmes stands to collect a packet in marketing opportunities should she complete-the feat, what with one meet organiser in Korea apparently already talking six-figure sums to woo her over.

Hill, it seems, ended up with just his medal, a clock and nothing else.

Yet there are a few similarities in their stories. Both went into their golden Games after a spell in the services, though Holmes' days as a PTI instructor hardly compared with Hill coming under fire as a wireless operator with the Royal Flying Corps.

They were the oldest 800m champions of their era - Hill 31 and Holmes 34 - both had supposedly seen their best days and both were bloodyminded enough to decide to go for two golds when everyone was telling them to stick to just the one.

Just like Holmes' favourite habit until this season, Hill would also get injured at the most inappropriate time and just battle on regardless. Two weeks before the Antwerp Games began, strained shin muscles in his left leg had resigned Hill to staying at home.

Officials wanted him only to run the 800m but he had a blazing argument with AAA secretary Sir Harry Barclay and won the right to do both.

Coached by Sam Mussabini, the legendary coach behind the 'Chariots of Fire' sprint success of Harold Abrahams, Hill's wartime experiencespersuaded him not to touch the dodgy water and awful tea during the Games but stick to Belgian lager.

It was clearly the fuel of champions - for Holmes, the equivalent appears to be cashew nuts - as, first, he upset the odds in the 800m against the mighty chain-smoking, heavy-drinking South African war hero Bevil Rudd, winning in a British record time of 1min 53.4sec.

Then, running his fifth race in five days in the pouring rain and aided by some selfless sheltering from his team-mate, future Nobel Peace prize winner Philip Noel-Baker, Hill landed the 1500m with ease as well.

Seventeen years later, before making a new home in Canada where he was to eventually die at the age of 79, Hill also sealed his name as a coach by guiding Sydney Wooderson to the world mile record.

Yet it was as a ground-breaking runner that he is, happily, now being recalled again. Back at those first post-World War One Games in 1920, the man from The Times watched Hill's historic double and saluted "a runner of unbeaten courage and a great tactician to boot".

How splendid that 84 years on, we should recognise the same qualities in Kelly Holmes.

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Holmes bid rekindles flame of humble hill

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