Athletic Sponsorship

Dear Blog,

    I am deafened by the silence concerning the fantastic scarecrows at the end of my drive. My wife says to accept defeat with good grace, so I will do as I am told and concede that someone else must have been chosen in error. I am not mad about the decision. I am bloody furious. Still say la vie, as they dit. Did you hear on the wireless yesterday Blog, that the Olympic committee are insisting that children attending some official function or other have to wear either white unmarked plimsolls or trainers made by one of the Olympic sponsors, Adidas. Interesting. It reminds me of two events ….. I am supposed to be acting as a mentor for some children at an Olympic event. Why Lord Coe asked me to attend the wrestling is quite beyond me. He must have heard about one of my Inter County races which I shall tell you about some time, Blog .. if I remember. I shall have to investigate this wrestling lark in case one of the bright sparks dares to ask me a question. If I don’t know the answer I shall adopt my teaching technique ‘Come in. Sit down. Shut up. Get your books out. Start work.’ Never fails!!!!! And the other incident I am reminded of is when I was sponsored ….. incidentally, I was a sponsored athlete from 1970 to 1995, meaning that during that time span, I never had to buy shoes, kit, tracksuits etc.. Blog, I kid you not. Must be a world record???? A quarter of a century. 25 years. Not with the same sponsor of course, but 25 years. Impressed Blog?? Impressed with a capital ‘I’ no doubt???? I do remember that Adidas produced a superb road racing shoe which for some reason, never went into production. The shoe was years ahead of its time. I had several pairs. I never saw anyone else with a pair, though no doubt there must have been. When the next sponsor came along, their racing shoe wasn’t a patch on my Adidas racer. So what I did was to strip the three Adidas stripes off the racers and paint on the new sponsor’s logo. Made a good job of it. No problem ….. Until …. A few months later I lined up for a rather important ‘10’ mile race wearing my adapted racing shoes and next to me on the start grid was the U.K. rep for Adidas. THE top man. ‘Nice pair of shoes Colin’ as we set off from the start. We had a laugh about it after the race!!!

If I take the kids to the wrestling, do I have to go in wrestling (read ‘swimming’) trunks?? Must remember to telephone Seb about it.

                                             Colin

P.S. Tiny Tims Children’s Centre, the charity for disable children, still has a place available for the Great North Run if you are interested.