Elite coaching special - Steve Cram on succeeding over 800m/1500m

Steve does not believe there are any big secrets in middle distance running. He trained hard, learned to race and kept taking on the challenges that came his way: "What I did do was just a lot of hard work. Sometimes people say ‘You must have done this or that’. But fundamentally it is simple to become a fairly decent middle distance runner - it is not too hard if people have got a bit of talent and do the training.”

Steve has been bemused by the way some young athletes who seem to show potential fail to develop. "I don't understand why they don't get better. How does that work? In my day until you were 21 you got better each year. I have no idea what has happened there.”

Despite his experiences and times of 1min 42sec for 800m, 3min 29sec for 1500m and 3min 46sec for a mile Steve says he is rarely approached for insights on what it takes to succeed as a distance runner. He wonders if this attitude is part of the problem: "Not many people ask me what I did and no-one really asked Jimmy [Hedley]. Not enough people ask.

"As a youngster when I first got on the circuit I went to ask people what they did and would go home with little bits of it. You learn and develop your training. The thing I used to get from those people was that I had to train hard.”

Steve is not persuaded by some of the approaches people believe are needed. Steve says he was not a full-time athlete with a pampered lifestyle. He says: "I was a student. The year I graduated was the year I won the world championships.”

By this time he had already won those European and Commonwealth titles, run in an Olympic 1500m final and gone to an earlier Commonwealth Games.

He continues: “People say you have got to be full time - a pro - but I'm not convinced.
"At the age of 17 to 21 most people are students. After that I'd not got pots of money. I was living with my mum and dad.”

Cram is bemused by some of the myths that do the rounds as to the wealth and privileges he enjoyed at a young age: "Someone asked me if I flew to the English Schools in a helicopter one year. People had said they were there when I had landed at Chesterfield in a helicopter!”

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