THIRTY years ago this month an 18-year-old youngster staggered exhausted from the finish line having won one of the most dramatic of all Church to Church walks. In years to come Rob Elliott was to establish himself as Guernsey’s finest ever race walker, winning the annual slog between the island’s 10 parish churches seven times, posting the third fastest time in the 71-year history of the event and mixing it with some of the best at Commonwealth Games level.
Elliott, 48, has not won a Church walk for 11 years and won’t be on the starting line tomorrow, but the baker and father of two is not ruling out a return to the biggest race in the CI walking calendar. If only that nagging hamstring would clear up.
Church to Church races seldom throw up sprint finishes, but Elliott has featured in three of the tightest, including that debut win in 1977 when he held off a fantastic late surge from Dave Dorey to win by 10sec. in 2hrs 53min. 44sec.
Only eight years earlier, Elliott had witnessed his first Church walk but, as he revealed this week, had it not been for a bet taken out by his father Mick with work colleagues, his own race walking career might never have happened.
The Elliotts had no link with the race until Rob’s father took up the challenge thrown down by his colleagues.
‘He did it for a bet at work and as we used to live in Paris Street all of us went down to see him.
‘His Bucktrout workmates told us ”tell your dad he owes us five bob [for not completing the 19.4-mile race] but he came in in about four hours 10 minutes and they had to pay up.’
Elliot senior was hooked.
‘After that they [the Sarnia Walking Club] started putting on novice walks, dad got keen and took his Church time down to 2-56.’
Young Elliott was soon race walking himself, as was younger brother Mark, who was to win the race once, in 1986.
‘In 1970, Wyndham Mann started putting on some junior walks and there was the likes of me and Mick Perrio. Do you know? Mick is the only one to have won both the Church walk and the Church run.’
‘I was always useless at every other sports, couldn’t play football or run, so I thought I’d give it a go.’
But it was another seven years before Elliott took on the big one and he went into it confident of success.
‘I could beat Dave [Dorey] over 20k and 30k, no problem. But in the West Show walk [20 miles] he hammered me.
‘I always went off quick and I had built up a three to four minute lead with four-and-a-quarter miles to go.
‘The next thing I knew he caught me going into the bus station by the newsagents kiosk.
‘But having caught me he didn’t go passed me and from the top of the Havelet slipway I took 10sec. put of him. I don’t know where I got it from.’
But boy was it tough, as Brian Green’s immediate post-race pictures showed.
The young winner had to be propped up by the runner-up and helped away by his proud father Mick. Nine years later, he was involved in another relative nailbiter. This time with his brother.
‘He caught me at the bus station and went straight past me.
‘People said afterwards I let him win. But I told them you must be joking. I’d never let him win.’
Rob had pulled clear of his brother at 11 miles and seemingly had the race won.
Mark had never raced further than 12 miles, but he had more stamina than anyone imagined and he swept past Rob down the finishing straight to win by 10 seconds.
The winning time adds credence to Rob’s insistence that he had not just stepped aside for his brother.
Mark’s 2-45.06 was 10min. quicker than the time Rob had posted the previous summer.
The elder Elliott brother was to lose another close one in 2000 when, within yards of the finish at South Esplanade, an exhausted Rob fell over 20 yards from the finish and Carl Thomson triumphed.
‘We were both passed our best but it was still a good race.
‘We were level through the station and we both knew it would come down to a sprint.’
The closest race of all, though, came in the very first one in 1936.
Guernseyman Basil J. Bisson beat Jersey’s H. G. Taylor by a ridiculously thin margin of two seconds in 3hrs 18min.
The record field for the event came in 1982, a race which Elliott regards as his best performance.
His time of 2-32.38 places him third in the all-time listings and is bettered only by two international walkers of the strongest pedigree, five-time Olympian Chris Maddocks and GB international Mark Easton.
‘Looking back that was probably my best race, on par with the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane a month later.’
All told, he has competed in 22 Church races, failing to finish in three.
Elliott has every Church statistic going and is hugely enthusiastic about preserving the history of the event through recording of individual performances.
It’s an event which has seen very few changes since its inception. The early races started and finished at the Weighbridge. But even after it moved it has maintained the same distance.
Another little known fact is that the race marked the very first event in the history of the Guernsey Island Amateur Athletic Club, formed in 1946.
GIAAC continued to be responsible for the event until the Sarnian Walking Club broke away in the mid-sixties and took over the running of the 1966 race.
In recent times, the race winner has invariably come from the UK, but tomorrow it is highly likely we will see the first Sarnian winner since Thomson’s success of 2000.
But exactly who it will be, is not so straightforward.
Elliott regards it as a three-way fight between the young Le Noury brothers, Stuart and Jason, and the veteran Terry Bates.
The race starts at 9am.
Article posted on 1st September, 2007 - 12.00am
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