British athletics lost one of its finest servants this week when Don Turner died aged 88.
A top ultra-distance runner in his youth, he went on to become treasurer of the National Union of Track Statisticians (NUTS) for 22 years and was a long-time volunteer official who specialised in time keeping.
In addition to those duties, he found time every week to contribute results to AW and Athletics Today magazines and was one of this magazine’s busiest and most accurate correspondents during the 1990s and turn of the millennium.
A quietly spoken character with a fine knowledge of the sport, he was the epitome of the word ‘gentleman’ and demonstrated his athletics addiction by attending major championships in his later years as part of the travelling army of British fans.
Running for Epsom & Ewell Harriers, he was runner-up in the London to Brighton race in 1959 and 1962 and third in 1961 and 1963. In the gruelling Comrades Marathon in South Africa he placed third in 1962, covering the uphill course in six hours and seven minutes.
His marathon best was 2:32:42 in 1968 and he set a world record for six hours on the track at Walton in October 1960 when he covered 52 miles and 1100 yards.
After hanging up his Dunlop Red Flash plimsolls, he played a key role organising the timekeeping at the first London Marathon in 1981. He was also involved in the pioneering photo-finish equipment at Crystal Palace in the 1970s, so much so that he was invited to work for Seiko in the run-up to the Barcelona Olympics.
Even in recent years he has remained active. At the Night of the 10,000m PBs he has been the main timekeeper, for example, before rising early the following day to time young athletes in Epsom.
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