In The Long Run

‘THE question leveled at rescuers by the disgruntled miners who spent 77 hours underground – ”What took you so long?” – could just as easily be asked of Jamie Donaldson.

Jamie’s next ambition was to be Heavyweight Champion of the World

Yesterday, the Times reports, the marathon runner ”trailed home with the slowest time in the history of the Commonwealth Games”.

”All other competitors had finished, showered, changed and eaten Sunday lunch when Jamie Donaldson crossed the finished line one hour and 19 minutes after the winner,” notes the Times. ”He was so late, he disrupted the men’s 200 metres.”

Jamie eventually crossed the line after 3 hours, 30 minutes and 20 seconds, a time which easily broke the 64-year record for the slowest marathon and which would only have earned him 4,909th place in the London Marathon.

With a performance like that, you’d expect him to be British. But Jamie actually hails from Norfolk Island, the notorious former penal colony off the coast of Australia, now largely populated by descendants of the Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian.

As a short order chef, Jamie gets little time to train, and running a marathon is somewhat difficult on Norfolk Island, ”a rocky, five-mile by three-mile outcrop with little flat ground”. Besides, Jamie was suffering from a calf injury during the marathon.

But his ”heroic failure” may yet be outdone in this week’s triathlon – in which Norfolk Island will be represented by Jamie’s 54-year-old father, Graeme.

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Posted: 29th, July 2002 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink