Running was something I wanted to do at school, so I became a champion at school. Then my father, when I was 16, took me to watch an athletic event. There are two parts to running. There is the simple enjoyment as you run through the countryside, a pure pleasure without any target. This meeting showed me a kind of forum in which success could be crystallized; those who were watching, applauded, and there was a gladiatorial interplay between the athletes. I watched an English runner called Sidney Wooderson, who had held the world record for the mile, and it had always been a British preoccupation to hold this mile record. There were a series of English runners who had held it. I watched him after the end of the war in 1945, running against the world record holders from Sweden, like Andersson. And, he was not in the same league, but he came up and challenged the world record holder on the last bend. The challenge was easily fought off by the Swede, but there was a feeling of courage that he showed in tackling the Swede, who looked physically much stronger, more elegant, and more powerful; Wooderson was a rather small man. But this exchange, this battle was, I think, the thing which led me to go on from simple running for pleasure to running with this target of records, Olympic Games and other events in mind.