No pix today, but a cool story

So, the Google doodle yesterday honored the 100th birthday of athlete Fanny Blankes-Koen, which reminded me that I'd seen her run long ago.  My eldest brother was in the Cleveland Harriers running club, in north Yorkshire, and seeing her name brought it back to mind after lo these many years, and I wondered if the club still existed.

Looked it up, and it certainly does.  It exists, and has a Twitter account.  So I thought it would be nice to tell those good folks that I still remembered the 1948 Olympic year, when the Harriers hosted an invitational meet locally, and world class track stars came to run.  My brother took me to see the meet. It was the year that Britain had the summer Olympics, and I imagine that's why all these stars were in the country.I would have been about nine.

Fanny Blankes-Koen was one, and I was stunned at my first sight of a real woman athlete's body, whipthin, muscled, and moving like the wind.  Her competition looked as if they were trudging in comparison.  She was described in the British press as a housewife and mother of three!  until she shut them all up by winning everything on offer at the Olympics.

And there was Arthur Wint, a Jamaican man whose running stride was nine, that is not a typo, feet. I remember reading this in the local paper. Seeing him run a 200 yard dash, his feet touched earth only a handful of times.  MacDonald Bailey, too, another wonderful athlete, from Trinidad.  Anyway, clearly I was impressed, since I remember it still all these years later. 

So it just shows, you never know what kids will remember.  

And I thought it would be fun to go to the Harriers' Twitter account and let them know about this memory.  Whereupon they got all excited and invited me to their 125th Year Celebration Dinner Dance in September, in north Yorkshire!  I declined, explaining it was a bit of a commute, but was thrilled with the invitation. 

Google on the athletes' names, you'll see.