Читать книгу 26.2 - The Incredible True Story of the Three Men Who Shaped The London Marathon - John Bryant - Страница 5

A book, like a marathon, can never make it to the finish without enormous help and support from an army of enthusiasts.

The friendship and support of Dave Bedford, the race director of the London Marathon, has been invaluable, and his tireless team and relentless pace setting has kept 26.2 on course.

My lifelong running companion, Olympic Marathon runner Donald Macgregor, is an inspiring researcher and he and Stan Greenberg, one of the world’s foremost track and field statisticians, have kept me firmly on track.

From Carpi, Italy, the birthplace of Dorando, my gratitude goes to Ivano Barbolini, the director of the Maratona d’Italia Memorial Enzo Ferrari and all his team, both for their research and permission to use their archive of pictures, along with Cristina Corradi, Luciana Nora, Augusto Frasca and Mirco Barbolini.

In the United States the efforts of Wayne Baker proved invaluable. My thanks also go to Walter MacGowan, Elliott Denman, Roger Robinson, Mary Wittenberg, Guy Morse, Gloria Ratti, George Hirsch, Ralph Cohn and Amby Burfoot.

Doug Gillon in Glasgow, Nancy Murphy in Tipperary, Ireland, and Nick Barrett, genealogist, helped me bring both Halswelle and Hayes to life. From the Flora London Marathon team there were invaluable contributions from John Disley, Nick Bitel, Brian Webber, Nicola Okey and many others.

Special thanks to Volker Kluge, a fine Olympic historian; Jan Paterson and Amy Terriere of the British Olympic Association; to Bob Wilcock, for permission to use his archive of 1908 postcards; to my agent Mark Lucas; Peter Lovesey, Steve Torrington, Dave Terry, Neil Allen, William Cockerel, Judith von Bradsky and Helen Elliott. And, of course, to Lamine Diack of the IAAF and Seb Coe for their generous words of endorsement.

I would like to express thanks for permission to quote from many newspapers. In Britain, The Times, the Daily Mail, the Windsor Express, the Daily Telegraph, the Pall Mall Gazette and The Sportsman proved invaluable. In the United States the New York Times, the Boston Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle and many others gave life and colour to the athletes of a century ago.

I am most grateful to all those fellow journalists and their newspapers who originally reported such vivid and compelling accounts of the races.

Thanks, too, to the skill and encouragement of John Blake and his team and my editor at John Blake Publishing, Clive Hebard.

Above all, for patience in the face of an obsession with running and writing that brought 26.2 to the finish line. Thanks to my wife Carol and my sons, Matthew and William.