Epsom & Ewell Harriers athlete completed runner-up within the London to Brighton race and 3rd within the Comrades Marathon within the Fifties and Nineteen Sixties sooner than changing into a long-time timekeeper
British athletics misplaced one among its best servants this week when Don Turner died elderly 88.
A best ultra-distance runner in his adolescence, he went directly to develop into treasurer of the Nationwide Union of Monitor Statisticians (NUTS) for 22 years and used to be a long-time volunteer reputable who specialized in time maintaining.
Along with the ones tasks, he discovered time each and every week to give a contribution effects to AW and Athletics As of late magazines and used to be one among this mag’s busiest and maximum correct correspondents all over the Nineties and switch of the millennium.
A quietly spoken persona with a nice wisdom of the game, he used to be the epitome of the phrase ‘gentleman’ and demonstrated his athletics dependancy via attending primary championships in his later years as a part of the travelling military of British lovers.
Working for Epsom & Ewell Harriers, he used to be runner-up within the London to Brighton race in 1959 and 1962 and 3rd in 1961 and 1963. Within the gruelling Comrades Marathon in South Africa he positioned 3rd in 1962, masking the uphill route in six hours and 7 mins.
His marathon best possible used to be 2:32:42 in 1968 and he set an international document for 6 hours at the monitor at Walton in October 1960 when he lined 52 miles and 1100 yards.
After striking up his Dunlop Pink Flash plimsolls, he performed a key function setting up the timekeeping on the first London Marathon in 1981. He used to be additionally concerned within the pioneering photo-finish apparatus at Crystal Palace within the Nineteen Seventies, such a lot in order that he used to be invited to paintings for Seiko within the run-up to the Barcelona Olympics.
Even in recent times he has remained lively. On the Evening of the ten,000m PBs he has been the principle timekeeper, as an example, sooner than emerging early the next day to come to time younger athletes in Epsom.
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