By rights it ought to figure prominently in this month’s Sports Personality of the Year Awards, but, as she admits, swimming is not a high-profile sport. She will be doing her best to raise its profile in Lisbon and subsequently Sydney, where privately she reckons that only Thompson stands between her and gold But she would prefer not to be the favourite. “I don’t want to get to the Olympic final and having people looking at me and saying ’she is the one to beat’.” It is inevitable, however, that such pressures will escalate.
Small fry she may be alongside some of the big barracudas of the pool, but it is comforting to know that Sue Rolph is unlikely to end up among the also-swams There is a steely purpose about this porpoise.. The students strolling to the dining hall at Leicester University were, it transpired, unaware that history was being made in their midst It was 1.30pm on Thursday. A runner trotted along the narrow roadway next to the Charles Wilson Building “Come on, William!” someone shouted. “An hour and a half to go.” And William Sichel continued on his way, head slightly bowed, his facial expression set deep in enduring mode, his wiry frame maintaining its metronomic rhythm. The students strolling to the dining hall at Leicester University were, it transpired, unaware that history was being made in their midst It was 1.30pm on Thursday.
A runner trotted along the narrow roadway next to the Charles Wilson Building “Come on, William!” someone shouted. “An hour and a half to go.” And William Sichel continued on his way, head slightly bowed, his facial expression set deep in enduring mode, his wiry frame maintaining its metronomic rhythm.
Three girls stopped at the corner of the block, where three students stood with clipboards, stopwatches, collection buckets and a lapcounting board “An hour and a half to go!” one of the girls said. “How long has this bloke been running, then?” The answer left her in a state of shock “Twenty-two and a half hours,” she blurted “I can’t believe that. The same person can’t have kept running for twenty-two and a half hours. I can’t even run for for twenty-two and a half minutes.”
She did, though, dig deep into her purse and dropped a coin or three into one of the buckets So did her friends.
And by the time the trio departed, a few pounds lighter before their lunchtime meal, the shortstriding Sichel was back within sight again. The next lap being the one in every six on which he slows to a brisk walk, First Night’s man on the spot joined the durable Scot on one of his 617m circuits.
“It’s been tough,” he said “Tougher than I imagined. It was cold and windy in the night and for a long period I was running on my own. I’ve had people helping me, people running so many laps for charity. But it’s not like a normal race, where you’ve got people to run against and chase and leader boards to follow.. Look out!” A Royal Mail van was bearing down rapidly.
Some nimble footwork was required to keep my companion on course for a place in the ultradistance running record books.
The Leicester University World Aids Day 24-hour run was, indeed, no normal race It was one half of the world’s first cyber race. At the same time as Sichel was lapping up the ground in Leicester, 47 rivals were circling a 235m indoor track in Waterloo, near Toronto. The Canadians had set off at 10am their time on Wednesday – precisely the same time as Sichel’s 3pm start in England. The two races, 6,000 miles and an ocean apart, merged into one on the internet.
Hourly updates on the distances covered were exchanged via the sports department computer at Leicester. At the 22-hour point Kath Newberry, one of the student helpers, came rushing down the Charles Wilson steps with the latest news “He’s in the lead!” she screamed excitedly. “He’s in the lead!” Sichel was not only in the lead but running away from the opposition “He’s 6km ahead,” Adrian Stott said. “But I’ll tell him it’s 3km – just so he doesn’t slacken off too much.”
Stott knows all about the psychology of ultra running Two months ago he won the AAA 24-hour title.
From 3pm on Wednesday to 3pm on Thursday, though, he was acting as Sichel’s “handler”, as ultra runners call their essential helper – furnishing him with drinks and food (bananas and energy bars), keeping him company for several laps, keeping him informed of his progress and generally keeping his spirits in as upward a state as possible.
They first met when Sichel bought a pair of shoes at Run and Become, an Edinburgh sports shop where Stott works as manager “William’s a wonderful character,” Stott said “He’s so self-effacing He takes everything in his stride. When his testicular cancer was diagnosed he never saw it as a problem. He just got on with things.”
As Sichel took another lap in his stride, dodging cyclists, students and staff cars, precisely how self-effacing a chap he happens to be was confirmed by Emma Staniland, the Leicester student who organised the English half of the race. “I knew William was a remarkable character, because so many people had told me about him,” she said. “But I didn’t know he’d suffered from cancer.”
Sichel, in fact, had a malignant testicle removed in July 1997.