Australian Cross Country Championships

In a few days, Nowra will host the 63rd Australian Men's and 50th Australian Women's Cross Country Championship.

In the lead up to these championships, we will present a few articles about the history of this race and the unique venue - Willandra.

Below is the first article about the 1959 Men's Cross Country Championships - held 50 years ago.

Vagg dethrones the king: The 1959 Australian Cross-Country Championships Oaklands Hunt Club, Melbourne

By LEN JOHNSON

In his preview of the 1959 Australian cross-country, The Age athletics correspondent Bruce Welch said of Bob Vagg: "A strong, intelligent runner, he could surprise by beating his more experienced rivals next Saturday."

Welch must have known something. Vagg did indeed surprise his more experienced rivals, led by New South Wales teammates Dave Power and Albie Thomas and, at 19 years of age, became the youngest man ever to win the title.*

On paper, as distinct from in the paper, it was an upset. Power was the king of Australian distance running. Seventh in the 1956 Olympic 10,000 metres, Power became the first Australian to win an Empire/Commonwealth distance gold medal when he won the six miles in Cardiff in 1958. He won the marathon for good measure to make it a double.

And he was a great cross-country exponent. Coming into the 1959 race, Power had won the previous three national titles.

Vagg was not intimidated, however. His victory was not a total shock to him.

"I didn't expect to win, but I thought I had a good chance," Vagg says. "I had been training a bit with Dave at that stage, and I was basically running better than him up to five miles on the road."

A bigger concern was the course, at Oaklands Hunt Club just north of Melbourne. On the edge of Melbourne's suburbs now, it was rural land then. The Hunt Club was used for the riding and cross-country running disciplines of 1956 Olympic modern pentathlon. The official Olympic report describes the 4km loop used then as "testing". It included some ploughed field and several crossing and re-crossings of a small creek.

Vagg was more worried about the "three or four jumps. I wasn't flexible with jumps. I tended to freeze up a bit as I approached them. But I coped."

Power put up a strong defence. "He got a break three-quarters of the way through the race," Vagg remembers, "but I must have got a second wind. I came home like a train."



The race report in The Age also notes that Power fell twice "at critical stages."

As well as doing some training with Dave Power, Vagg had a secret weapon. Like Dave Stephens, "the Flying Milko", some of his training was automatic. For Stephens, who broke Emil Zatopek's world record for six miles at the start of 1956, it was a milk round; a paper run did the trick for Vagg.

"I'd done paper runs since I was about 11 or 12," says Vagg. "Elizabeth Bay is a very hilly area, it's all up or down, and I did a run from Paddington to there and back."

Later, Vagg trained between university lectures during his lunch-break.

"Anyone who can beat runners of the proven calibre of Power and Thomas has a great athletic future," Herb Elliott's coach Percy Cerutty said of Vagg's 1959 win. "On current form, he should represent Australia over 10,000 metres in (the 1960 Olympic Games in) Rome."

Vagg missed out then, but he won the cross-country again in 1961 and ran the six miles at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth. He won the 1964 Australian marathon title and finished 31 out of 68 starters in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic marathon.

Then he retired. "I decided I wasn't going to be the world's best so it was time to get a career." He still walks for exercise and is soon heading off for a walking tour of Scotland.

*Bob Vagg (19 years, six months, 20 days) remains the second-youngest man to win an Australian cross-country title. The late Mizan Mehari is the youngest. The former Ethiopian, who settled in Australia after the 1996 world junior championships in Sydney, won the 1997 title at 17 years, seven months, two days) and 1998 at 18 years, seven months, one day.



Image of the 1961 race (held in Sydney's Centennial Park)with a few of the leading competitors from the 1959 race. In the photo are: (30) Graham Thomas NSW, (2) Trevor Vincent Vic, (3) Tony Cook Vic. Image courtesy of Trevor Vincent.

Australian Cross County Championships 1959 Melbourne, 22 August 1959

10 KM - Men - Saturday 22 August 1959

1 Bob Vagg NSW 32.22.4
2 Dave Power NSW 32.35.0
3 Albie Thomas NSW 32.53.0
4 Graham Thomas NSW 32.53.0
5 Don Brain Vic 33.08.0
6 Geoff Walker Vic 33.41.0
7 Rob Morgan-Morris Vic 33.50.0
8 Tony Cook Vic 34.10.0
9 Ray White Vic 34.16.0
10 Malcolm Hay WA 34.27.0
11 John Lawler NSW 34.42.0
12 Bruce Russell Vic 34.50.0
13 Ron Jenkins NSW 35.22.0
14 Neville Scott SA 35.25.0
15 Clarence Radford WA 35.32.0
16 Lloyd Frisby SA 35.43.0
17 David Foote Qld 36.07.0
18 Ian Beck SA 36.22.0
19 George Bale Qld 36.25.0
20 Doug Worling Qld 36.40.0
21 Rod Nicholls Tas 37.05.0
22 Ian Wheeler SA 37.12.0
23 Murray Edwards SA 37.14.0
24 Alain Bray Qld 37.21.0
25 Geoff Saggers WA 37.24.0
26 Peter Flessor Qld 38.26.0
27 E. Scott Tas 40.18.0
- Terry Sullivan Vic DNF


TEAMS

1 New South Wales NSW 10 pts
2 Victoria Vic 28 pts
3 Western Australia WA 49 pts
4 South Australia SA 57 pts
5 Queensland Qld 66 pts

 

Len Johnson was The Melbourne Age athletics writer for over 20 years, covering five Olympics, 10 world championships and five Commonwealth Games. He is the author of The Landy Era, From Nowhere to the Top of the World, and a former national class distance runner (2.19.32 marathon) who trained with Chris Wardlaw and Robert de Castella.

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