Great Britain's Brendan Foster recounts his memorable and thrilling Roma 1974 European Athletics Championships 5000m triumph, when his vanquished rivals included Finnish legend and double 1972 Olympic champion Lasse Viren.
A pivotal part of Foster's masterplan formulated to take down the formidable Flying Finns in Rome required his roommates to smuggle their bed sheets into the Stadio Olimpico.
"The plan was to run from the front and to try and break away in the middle by running a 60- second lap," recalled the great British distance runner and trailblazing race organiser.
"I got my roommates, Andy Holden and Ray Smedley, to sit at the front of the crowd at the end of the back straight and told them to start waving the bed sheets when I got clear."
"I’d read that Percy Cerutty had done that for [Australia's] Herb Elliott when he won the Olympic 1500m in Rome in 1960.”
Nearly 50 years on, Foster will get a chance to reflect on how his grand plan came to golden fruition on that sticky September night at the Stadio Olimpico when he returns to the scene of his crowning glory as an honoured guest at the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships from 7-12 June.
Fittingly, the man who founded the mass running phenomenon of the Great North Run will be back in the Italian capital not as ‘Big Bren,’ as he was popularly known in his time as a beloved British track star during the 1970s, but as Sir Brendan Foster.
Foster, now 76, was given the prestigious honour of a British knighthood four years ago but he could have been given the accolade for the meticulous, doggedly determined and ultimately courageous manner in which he plotted and accomplished what he proudly recalls as "the best race I ever ran."
The respected British publication Athletics Weekly went farther and bestowed the status of all-time greatness upon the future Sir Bren.
"He won a major distance championship like Zatopek and Kuts used to," wrote the editor Mel Watman in his race report. "Not since Kuts in Berne 20 years ago had a European 5000m championship field been humiliated in this manner."
In the Swiss capital in 1954, the Ukrainian Kuts crushed the opposition with a stunning run from gun to tape, finishing 12.2 seconds clear in a world record 13:56.6 with Britain’s Chris Chataway pipping the Czech legend Emil Zatopek for the distant silver.
Mid-race pace makes the difference
In Rome, Foster brought an innovative variation on traditional championship-winning distance running tactics: a mid-race injection of pace that neutralised the fast-finishers.
"Basically, I was training to run against Lasse Viren and Juha Vaatainen," Foster recalled. "They had both won major titles with fast-finishing bursts: Lasse going faster and faster over the last 1000m and Vaatainen with a last lap sprint."
At the 1971 European Athletics Championships in Helsinki, where Foster won a bronze medal in the 1500m, the balding Vaatainen uncorked a stunning 53.8-second last lap to win an epic 10,000m final, taking 11 seconds out of the British favourite and world record-holder Dave Bedford as well as burning off the defending champion Jurgen Hasse from East Germany.
A former Finnish junior 400m hurdles champion and 10.9 seconds 100m runner, Vaatainen went on to win the 5000m four days later with a final circuit of 53.0.
At the Munich 1972 Olympics Games, where Foster finished fifth in the 1500m final, Viren completed an even more famous Finnish 5000m/10,000m double, winding up the pace with closing laps of 56.0 and 56.4 respectively.
Aim change after world record
However, after clocking a world two miles record of 8:13.8 at London's Crystal Palace stadium and then winning the European Cup Final 5000m in Edinburgh in 1973, Foster adjusted his sights to longer distances and had the Finns in his crosshairs as he prepared for the double major championship year of 1974.
The Commonwealth Games were held in late January and early February at Christchurch in New Zealand and – with his home track in Gateshead being subjected to an upgrade – Foster took his wife Sue to Malaga for a Christmas and New Year package holiday that doubled as a two-week warm weather training stint.
Running back from the track one day, he spotted a familiar balding figure ahead of him on the road: Vaatainen.
"On New Year’s Eve we had dinner together, with our wives," recalled Foster. "Juha got a little bit drunk, and I’ll never forget him thumping his fists down on the table and saying, 'I am the champion. In Roma I will be the champion again. Nobody can beat Juha. I am so quick.'"
Foster proceeded to run the third quickest 5000m in history at the Commonwealth Games, 13:14.6, albeit being obliged to settle for the silver medal when coming home 0.2 behind Kenya’s Ben Jipcho at the end of a thrilling race.
At the start of the European outdoor season, he won a novel 3000m race at Wembley Stadium before English football’s showpiece FA Cup final with Vaatainen finishing eight seconds adrift in second place.
"Afterwards, he started again,” recalled Foster. "He was saying, ‘You must remember, Juha will be champion in Roma. You will not be champion. Juha will be champion’."
Rome favourite
After christening the new synthetic track at Gateshead with a 3000m world record of 7:35.2, Foster arrived in Rome as a clear favourite. Vaatainen was a notable absentee, struck down by injury in his quest to regain his killer form of 1971. and Finnish hopes were pinned on Viren rediscovering his Olympic elan.
Foster had debated long and hard with his coach, Stan Long, and his mentor and training partner, Lindsay Dunn, about whether his intended mid-race injection of pace would nullify Viren and any others rival who might fancy their chance in a sprint finish.
"We’d spent weeks going over the various machinations – what if Viren goes with your 60-second lap, and so on – but I’d made my mind up that I was going to do that," recalled Foster.
"I also remember distinctly on the bus going down to the stadium thinking, ‘You can win this but you can also win it in style.’ When I was standing on the start line, I was thinking, ‘Right, I want this to be a memorable victory.’"
Foster led from the opening 100 metres, clocking splits of between 63.3 and 66.0 for the first seven laps in stifling 85% humidity. Then, on lap eight, he put his foot on the gas.
"I had Andy and Ray waiting with their bed sheets, but unfortunately I was running against a double Olympic champion,” he reflected. “When I put in my kick, I could feel Viren right at my shoulder. I was thinking, ‘My god, he’s coming with me. What am I going to do?’
Sheet signals
"If you look at the race again, halfway down the back straight suddenly a gap starts to open. The lads start waving their sheets in the crowd, and I’m clear."
Foster finished a clear winner in a championship record 13:17.2 with East Germany’s Manfred Kuschmann - the 10,000m champion in Rome six days earlier - taking silver in 13:24.0 and Viren the bronze, the only European medal of his career, in 13:24.6.
"It was the best race I ever ran," said Foster, who went on to take an Olympic 10,000m bronze medal behind Viren and Portugal’s Carlos Lopes two years later in Montreal . "Viren came up to me afterwards and said, ‘That was the best 5000m race I’ve ever seen, but I was watching it from behind.’
"I also remember, when I was doing my lap of honour, down from the group of Finnish supporters on the back straight came Juha Vaatainen.
"He came down to the edge of the track, shook my hand and he said, ‘You are the true champion.’ I’ll never forget that. It sort-of brought it all full-circle."
Simon Turnbull for European Athletics