Original story

Aug 4, 1930

From Fletcher’s Field, Montreal, over a 500-mi. irregular course of roads through Victoriaville. Quebec, Ste. Anne de la Perade, Joliette, and back to Montreal’s baseball stadium runners plodded last week in a relay race. Eighteen thousand spectators cheered the winners. Swathed in wraps, Arthur Newton of Rhodesia, South Africa, and Peter Gavuzzi of Southampton, England, hurried away to get some rest. Their total time for the 500-mi. course was 48 hr. 4 min., but they had been fresh enough to do the final lap of 26 mi., in the fast time of 2 hr. 18 min. 40 sec., 4 min. 50 sec. ahead of the U. S. team of Joie Ray and Johnny Salo. Marathon followers took due note of the victory, recalling that small, wiry Gavuzzi had run two years ago in C. C. Pyle’s Bunion Derby and had done well enough.

Arthur Newton’s neighbors in South Africa remember only vaguely why he started running. It was some grudge he had against the government. Kaffirs had been given holdings too near his farm. He protested, but the government paid little attention. Through months of talking and brooding the thought of winning that case became a mania eating up all his other thoughts. By degrees it developed a corollary. He felt that to get the hearing he wanted he must attract attention, make himself famous by some remarkable exploit or else hurt himself so badly and spectacularly that the British Government in South Africa and the whole world would listen when he told what a spectacular injustice had been inflicted upon him.

Arthur Newton had never done any running. He was 40—already past the age for marathoners—yet the plan he decided on was to become the greatest runner in the world. One day he began to run around his farm. Round the fence he went, twice a day for as long as he could keep it up, in the morning and at night. The Kaffirs who had been allowed too near stared at the thin, sweating man running clumsily in his farm clothes under the glaring sun. He sent to Durban for shoes and shorts. In two years his fame had gone beyond the district and his running had improved. Nobody laughed when he asked for timekeepers in an attempt to break a world’s record. Starting one hot July morning in 1923 from the Agricultural Show Grounds in Durban he broke the world’s record for 50 mi. in 5 hr. 53 min. 5 sec. As soon as he had finished and found people gathered around him he began to talk about that matter of the Kaffirs.

Arthur Newton ran 20 miles a day to keep training. He wore leather socks next his skin. Every hour he drank a half-pint glass of lemonade containing eight teaspoonfuls of sugar, half a teaspoonful of salt, and cracked ice. Other records: London to Brighton—5 hr. 53 min. 43 sec., 1924; 100 mi. at Bulawayo, S. F.—14 hrs. 43 min., 1927.

From The Argus – 15 Nov 1924

From The Argus – 7 April, 1928

Book review about Arthur Newton book

Various articles

From Wikipedia

Arthur Newton (runner)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arthur Francis Hamilton Newton (born 20 May 1883, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England died 7 September 1959, Hillingdon, Middlesex, England^[1]) was an endurance athlete. He won the Comrades Marathon five times.

His great legacy is that when he started running seriously in 1922 he quickly dismissed the then current ideas on long distance training and invented (or perhaps re-invented) the concept of high mileage training at relatively slow speeds (later called Long Slow Distance). His win in the 1923 Comrades Marathon is one of the great athletic feats.

[edit] Background

In 1901 Newton travelled to South Africa to join his brother and worked as a teacher. After returning to England in 1909 he decided to settle in South Africa permanently and in 1911 acquired a farm in Natal. During the Great War Newton served in the Natal Light Horse as a dispatch rider. On returning to his farm he found it in a state of neglect and after some disagreements with the government decided to generate publicity for his case by running the 1922 Comrades Marathon which had been first held the previous year.

Although he had run when he was younger Arthur Newton restarted his running career on 1 January 1922 at the age of 38. Just 20 weeks later he competed in his first Comrades Marathon.

[edit] Comrades Marathon

The 1922 race was the first up version of the race. Just before Camperdown he took the lead from Purcell of Greytown and won the race in a time of 8:40:00.^[2]

The next year, 1923, he had trained properly and won by 52 minutes in a time of 6:56:07, beating the previous record by over 2 hours. Only by chance were two race officials at the finish. They recorded the time of the nearby Post Office clock.

In 1924, an up year, he won by 75 minutes in a time of 6:58:22. After this race he returned to England and ran the London to Brighton course in 5:53:43 beating the previous record by over an hour. When the London to Brighton race started as an annual event in 1951 the trophy for the winner was called the ‘Arthur Newton Cup’.

In 1925 he lowered the record again with a time of 6:24:54. 1926 was a poor year when he finished second in a time of 7:02:00. 1927 was another winning year with a time of 6:40:56.

[edit] Rhodesia

Although he had now gained the publicity he wanted he did not receive the compensation he thought he deserved and in 1925 decided to move to Rhodesia. Lack of money meant he began the 770 mile trip on foot. However some newspapers gave him publicity and money was raised for him. In Rhodesia he founded the Bulawayo Harriers and set amateur records for 60 and 100 miles.

[edit] Later Races

In early 1928 Newton broke the 100 mile record on the Bath to London road in a time of 14:22:10. Later that year he began competing as a professional and ran in races in America, Canada and Britain. In his last race in 1934 he broke the Bath to London 100 mile record again with a time of 14:06:00 at the age of 51.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Comrades Marathon