World marathon champion Robert De Castella and Olympic 400m hurdles champion Debbie Flintoff-King are amongst five of Australia's greatest athletes inducted into Athletics Australia's prestigious Hall of Fame.
This headline gave me imense pleasure and it took me back to a period of marathon racing in the 80's when racing over the distance was more than simple time-trials.
Robert De Castella was voted the premier marathon athlete of the decade and for good reason. It was during a period of the most intensive rivalry over the 26.2 miles the distance has ever known.
Don't get me wrong, marathoning is great these fine days however then it was about the athletes and not the times, though the times were still important, racing and beating your foe was the 'biggie'
When Derek Clayton put the marathon record into a different league in 1969 with 2:08:34, we had to wait an enormous 12 years for the record to be broken and on that occasion it went unrecognised when Deek ran 2:08:18 in Fukuoaka in late 1981.
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And the reason being, is that the USA 's Alberto Salazar had run 2:08:13 at New York City Marathon a short while earlier and it was only discovered some years later that the course was in actual fact short by 148 meters.
So the great Aussie was never lauded with the world record until a number of years later.
In 1984, the LA Olympic Marathon was absolutely exceptional with De Castella favourite to win, he would only manage 5th in a race won by Portugal's Carlos Lopes.
Later on in 84, Steve Jones travelled to the Chicago Marathon in a race billed as a rematch between Lopes and De Castella. However we were again given the chance to witness vintage racing in the form of the Welshman setting a new World Record of 2:08:05.
It was a period in time when Chicago and New York were vying for top spot and London began to emerge on the scene with Boston finally going professional and the races were epic in proportion, the best came out to race and there was a buzz about marathons and how fast they could go and the legendary Aussie Robert De Castella came out the supreme warrior of that period
Good on you mate
