I have been watching Steve Cram (62) for years.
As many as years I have been running.
If I started running, back in the 80s, I had done it driven by people like him, like Cram, or like Sir Sebastian Coe, or like Steve Ovett: the British middle-distance, how can we forget them, we who are in our fifties?
I admired and envied Steve Cram in that 1983, the year of his flight to the 1,500 world title. How that blonde slid in the last 200 m!
“Cruising speed”, they called what he did: “Nobody has his cruising speed”.
Engrossed in the cruising speed of those days in Helsinki, good Cram had released Steve Scott and Said Auita entering the last corner, and also the great José Manuel Abascal, fifth then.
And that’s it.
There was no way to stop him.
I watched and envied him then as an athlete, and I have continued to watch him in recent times, now that he is a BBC athletics commentator, a classic voice and silhouette at Europeans, Worlds and Games.
For years, I have been running into him halfway around the world, a silent admirer.
But this Tuesday, on the eve of the 1,500m final in Budapest (this Wednesday at 9:15 p.m., with the presence of Mario García Romo), I said to myself:
– Come on, board.
And for him I’ve gone.
(…)
Cram is still skinny and sharp, and he was immersed in his chores, reviewing data on his computer, sitting in the Media Center of the Budapest stadium, when I approached him to say:
–You won the 1,500 in the first World Cup in the history of athletics, and tomorrow (for today) is the final of the distance. The Vanguard needs to talk to you.
And the myth has looked up, has looked me in the eye and has said:
-Now?
-Now.
–OK, let’s go there –he answered, standing up.
And so we have found a secluded corner in the room, and mess.
I have said to him:
–Last December, I had the opportunity to talk with Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the pearl of the current midfielder. Ingebrigtsen has already been European champion and Olympic champion. But when I asked him about his big goals in life, he replied: ‘I have a big outstanding debt. I have never been a 1,500 world champion. And as long as it isn’t, I won’t feel complete.
–Ingebrigtsen was still young at the 2019 World Cup (he was 4th, he was 19 years old). And last year he had some injuries in the winter, and even though he was pretty close to his top, he wasn’t on his top (he was 2nd). But this year I think he is a better athlete. And if he shows respect towards his opponents, I think he can win in two or three different ways. Besides, I don’t think any of his rivals believe that he can beat him.
–When you say disrespectful, do you mean that he lost last year to Jake Wightman for trusting himself too much?
(After his defeat, Jakob Ingebrigtsen said he did not understand how he could have lost to someone inferior to him).
–I think that perhaps he believed that if he did what he had always done, which was to take the lead with 800m to go, no one would be able to overtake him. But I repeat, then he was at 98% and Wightman, a better eight-hundred-year-old, faster than Ingebrigtsen, was in a unique shape in his life. I think Ingebrigtsen learned from that and will not make similar mistakes.
So there’s no alternative?
–He is clearly the favourite, and he is going to build a very fast career at some point. But he must manage well, because he also has 5,000 ahead of him and cannot go extraordinarily hard.
–¿Ve similitudes entre usted e Ingebrigtsen?
-Some, yes. When he was starting out, his father came to see me, he asked me for some advice. I saw right away that I was better than Henrik and Filip, his older brothers, and the family asked me questions about my training methods. We are talking about intensities, I think they do more long and demanding jogging sessions, and more hard work on the track. But I’ll tell you something: Ingebrigtsen is more long-distance runner than me. He tends to 5,000. I tended to 800.
