September. Last of the summer wine.

[Bierzo Baggie]

After leaving the RAF Jack worked as a groundsman and after work he’d pound the Black Country streets, becoming one of the first runners to regularly churn out 100 miles a week. Most of those miles were run at night.

His only chance of Olympic glory came in The London games of 1948 and went horribly wrong. He was favourite to win the marathon but according to Jack himself, his fatal error had been “to bathe my feet in permanganate of potash. I over-pickled them. The skin was so hard it just blistered. It was impossible for me to keep running”. He dropped out and such was his disappointment that he announced his retirement, although his wife, Millie, soon coaxed him back into competition again.

Between 1946 and 1950 Jack won the AAA marathon championship 4 times and in 1950 he represented Britain in the Commonwealth Games marathon in New Zealand. With 8 miles to go his shoes fell apart. Determined not to repeat the Olympics debacle he carried on running and finished barefoot, bloody and blistered and 4 minutes ahead of his nearest rival. In the same year he also took the European title in Brussels and at 43 he remains the oldest athlete ever to win the European games marathon. There was still more to come. In 1953 he ran a world record for 30 miles. However, by this time arch rival Jim Peters had succeeded him as England’s foremost marathon runner and Jack Holden retired. Peters himself paid tribute to Holden describing him as “a ruthless runner, always starting with the absolute determination to kill the opposition right from the off”.

Jack died last March just days short of his 97th birthday disproving my dad’s theory that the intensity of elite level athletics knocks years off your life. At least it didn’t seem to be the case for Jack. And who knows how much he’d be worth as a world class runner in today’s professionalized era. The running track of Jack’s beloved Tipton Harriers bears his name and there are also “the Jack Holden gardens” nearby. Amusingly Jack rejected the proposal to erect a statue of him saying “no dog is going to pee on me while I’m alive”.
He lived his final days with his daughter and son-in-law in Cocklemouth in the Lake District (what a great fell runner he’d have made!). I’m sure he died a happy man.