Athletics: John Walker clocks up a milestone

From 10am to 3pm, six days a week, you'll find John Walker in his equestrian supply store. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

John Walker tries to divide his days up now as precisely as he planned the splits that took him to the top of the sporting world.

Not that he succeeds.

Parkinson's disease, which has afflicted him for a decade, invariably wins out at some point.

Four protein-based pills are his daily dose - he resists taking more. If he gets the spread right throughout the day, gets the balance right with his food, anticipates when the next pill is needed, he can win as much as you can over a disease that impairs brain cells and robs the body of its fluid movement.

But the signs of his disease are always there.

Fluidity was once the key to John Walker's life. And yesterday, when he awoke in his South Auckland home, his first thought could have been to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the night in Sweden when he became the first miler in history to break the 3m 50s mark.

The only other Kiwis Walker knows of in attendance at Gothenburg - when he ran virtually solo in recording 3:49.4 - were his running pal Rod Dixon and the journalist Ivan Agnew.

But Walker says he didn't give the mark a thought when he awoke yesterday, despite a TV interview with Keith Quinn on the subject this week. He had in fact already cancelled a planned dinner for 150 people last night because he "didn't want the adulation".

Dixon, who lives in the United States, rang yesterday morning however.

"I never thought about it until Rod phoned ... that was nice," says Walker.

"He told me the story that the day I broke the record, he bought a gold necklace. We all wore stuff like that then.

"He doesn't wear it anymore but he still has it, and every time he looks at it, remembers why he bought it."

Dixon is helping to organise an annual dinner in San Diego which honours a different sports star each year.

Walker will be the honoured guest in February, and that brilliant mile run has as much as anything to do with his legendary status.

Can it really be three decades since Walker, now 53, broke new ground in athletics to become a famous figure world wide?

The following year, after winning the Olympic 1500m gold medal in Montreal, Walker was on a flight to Philadelphia to receive an international award.

A woman on the plane said she had seen Walker's triumphant Olympic run and offered to show him New York by night, in her limousine. Rose Kennedy, matriarch of the most famous political clan on earth, was true to her word.

The Olympic gold medal was the highlight of Walker's career.

Without it he says: "I would have regarded my career as a failure. I would never have forgiven myself."

His greatest run was in setting the world 2000m record - which stood for a decade - just weeks before the 1976 Olympics.

But it was the world mile record, the breaking of a new barrier, that had the greatest influence on his life, by "thrusting me into a completely different limelight".

Gothenburg was an unusual venue for such a feat, he says.

Walker had decided he was in the form to break Filbert Bayi's world mile record, although without believing he would break the 3m 50s barrier.

For the first and only time in his career, he asked the promoter of a meeting to alter an event so that the 1500m race was turned into a mile contest. The promoter agreed.

"Probably no other meet would have been accommodating," says Walker, who made the request by letter.

"I wouldn't have chosen Gothenburg normally. It was an open stadium with wind, and athletics is not big there.

"If I'd picked a bigger meet with better competition, I could have gone faster.

"Afterwards, the switchboard at the hotel was jammed for 48 hours. Time magazine had the first interview - as a young kid you never thought Time would be talking to you. I got very little sleep and was exhausted.

"I didn't really know what I'd done, the significance of it. In 1975, I was named world athlete of the year.

"You know, I've never been back to Gothenburg. Strange. I've had contact with all the other meets but never that one. It's a place better known for soccer.

"On the calendar there aren't even any meets there anymore. I've no desire to go back."

As legend has it in Agnew's book Kiwis Can Fly, Walker had lunched on a plate of fish and potatoes, washed down with a beer, on the day of the race.

This was an era of less meticulous dietary planning. The great America runner Steve Scott, for instance, used to religiously munch on three packets of biscuits before each race, although he did have a spell on a diet that did plenty for his appearance although nothing for his performances.

Walker, who famously ate what he felt like and avoided diet fads, denies the beer story however. It was fish and chips, with Coca-Cola. He did, however, have a beer the night before.

His appearance fee was a mere US$600, and after the race he found the promoters had filled his bath tub with beer and ice. He received a large crystal vase with an inscription and his image embossed in it. The vase now contains flowers in the Walker home. Simple reminders of simpler times.

At the time of the mile record, he was still employed by the Downers quarry in Wiri, where he had been an office worker and truck driver. He was in Europe on unpaid leave.

His training regime had included belting around a dusty 10-mile flat course near the quarry during his lunch hour, at a race pace time of about 52 minutes, followed by a quick sandwich and shower. The truck drivers would yell: "You're bloody nuts."

HIS CV includes pounding the streets with fellow running great Dick Quax - who sits alongside Walker on the Manukau City Council - selling radio advertising.

"We didn't care about money. We just ran," says Walker. The experience of lining up alongside the great runners meant he was living a dream when he first went to Europe.

Yet another childhood Walker dream had been to own a shop. Which he now does.

From about 10am to 3pm, six days a week, Walker can be found at Stirrups, a high-quality equestrian supply store in Manurewa close to where he was brought up. His wife Helen runs a similar shop in Newmarket.

The Walkers are a close family: Elizabeth (26), Richard (21), Tim (17) and Caitlin (13) share the family home at Flat Bush, where John's medals and trophies are tucked away in an inconspicuous cabinet. Only a stained glass window depicting his Olympic run, a surprise gift from Helen, is an obvious reminder of his glorious sporting past.

He is grieving the loss of his father Roy, who died just a fortnight ago from lung disease, having survived only nine months when given longer to live. His mother Leah lives in Manurewa.

Walker is chairman of the community development committee at the council, and talks proudly of how the city is the only one in the world that still refuses to charge a swimming pool entrance fee. He is dedicated to community projects that provide activities for kids and families.

He despairs at the proliferation of crime, bars and poker machines - "the scourge of life" - in his community.

"The Manurewa TAB has the highest turnover in the country," he says.

But his personal fight is always with Parkinson's. He believes the disease may be the result of pollution, or having been exposed to chemicals as a youngster on his family's sheep farm. It could also be linked to a traumatic birth - Walker was born with the umbilical chord wrapped around his throat and it was "touch and go" for the first few days as to whether he would live.

He still plays golf and tennis because sweeping movements aren't a problem. It's the more delicate things - like tying a shoelace or buttoning a shirt - that are hard.

He shies away from television and public appearances because the disease leaves his face rigid.

"You feel like people are saying you have a blank face. You just can't help it," he says.

"If I get my pills wrong then I can't perform at the level I want to perform at. And I still expect myself to perform at 100 per cent.

"I haven't known what a normal life is like for 10 years. I work 14-hour days - that's my choice - but I get tired.

"The trouble is a lot of Parkinson's sufferers tend to sit around because they get embarrassed. Sometimes I get busy and forget the pills. If you get it wrong, the pills wear off - then there's a down period.

"It's not nice ... like the water is draining out of your mind. Like the sea is draining. It's weird.

"You would not notice any difference but the feeling in my whole body changes from the side-effects of the tablets.

"No one is exempt. Young, old. There are kids as young as 20, which is real cruel.

"Basically I live within the capabilities I've got every day. I make the best of it, because the future I don't know."

Evolution of a record

How the world mile record has fallen

3m 59.4s Roger Bannister, England, 1954
3.58.0 John Landy, Australia, 1954
3.57.2 Derek Ibbotson, England, 1957
3.54.5 Herb Elliot, Australia, 1958
3.54.4 Peter Snell, New Zealand, 1962
3.54.1 Snell, 1964
3.53.6 Michel Jazy, France, 1965
3.51.3 Jim Ryun, United States, 1966
3.51.1 Ryun, 1967
3.51.0 Filbert Bayi, Tanzania, 1975
3.49.4 JOHN WALKER, New Zealand, 1975
3.49.0 Sebastian Coe, England, 1979
3.48.8 Steve Ovett, England, 1980
3.48.53 Coe, 1981
3.48.40 Ovett, 1981
3.47.33 Coe, 1981
3.46.31 Steve Cram, England, 1985
3.44.39 Noureddine Morceli, Algeria, 1993
3.43.13 Hicham El Guerrouj, Morocco, 1999