Hugh Jones has been coming to Bangalore since 2008, as Race Director of the TCS World 10K. But before he was a race organizer, Jones was an accomplished professional long-distance runner, winning the second London Marathon and the Stockholm Marathon twice.
The Englishman has been secretary of the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races since 1996, but he insists he still sees races “instinctively from a runner's point of view”. Jones, now 59, spoke to The Hindu last week at the conclusion of the eighth edition of the TCS World 10K. Excerpts:
Your running history: I was a professional marathon runner from 1982 until 1994 or thereabouts. I’ve run maybe 80 marathons around the world. I was fifth in the World Championships in 1987, eighth in 1983, 12th in the Olympic Games in 1984.
Organising a successful race: A successful race would be the impossible, which is when nothing goes wrong. Things always go wrong but it is just the significance of those things that is important.
Conditions for a fast elite race: We try to present a clean course to them. It is up to their choice but we provide a pacemaker who tries to keep the pace going rather than turning it into more of a tactical event. So we do what we can. We are always looking at ways to make it faster – make it flatter, have fewer turns, smaller gradients.
Your favourite marathon: I can’t separate the course from the event, the occasion. Because I’m from London, and I won the second London marathon, that course ranks very highly. You are always prejudiced.
I also won the Stockholm marathon twice and I go back to measure the course these days. I have very fond memories of that as well. A course is too mixed up with your personal attachments.
What makes the popular races popular? Boston has the history. London has the competitive feel. Berlin has the fast times. Tokyo certainly has a lot of razzmatazz. Elite performances do have a lot to do with it. They give it a certain international flavour.
Berlin's tendency to produce world records: It is because they have the intention; they somewhat manufacture records. They bring it all together purposefully. They have a very heavy posse of pacemakers.
They don’t really have the resources to gather the huge numbers of internationally competitive athletes that London does. London has a far richer event. Berlin doesn’t concentrate so much on the head to head. They just concentrate on getting a couple of guys out there who are going to run really fast. In the last few years they have broken the men’s record every other year (six times since 2003).
But the women’s record (2:15:25) has been put out of sight for a while by Paula Radcliffe. It is already 12 years old.
Can a marathon ever be run inside two hours: I’d say not in my lifetime. It (the men's world record time, now 2:02:57) has come down and we are not on the same playing field as we were before. But the most obvious way the two-hour barrier will be broken is if there is some kind of drug advancement that leads to abuse and it gets broken undetected.
That is the first thing to be wary of. The fastest runners have still got to improve three minutes – that is a full kilometre. It is a lot to make up.
