Last month, Bob Maplestone, who came from Cardiff, Wales to run college track and cross-country at Eastern Washington, died near Seattle. Because of a chance encounter on a city street, I got to know Bob.
Running through a north Spokane residential area with my best friends and high school cross-country teammates, Mike and Dave Dixon, we came to an intersection at the same moment as Bob Maplestone.
We recognized him right off. Before I’d even taken up running, Bob got a lot of media attention by winning the 1972 open mile at the Drake Relays, a prestigious collegiate track meet in Iowa. He set a meet record of 4:00.4 and beat the American record-holder, Jim Ryun.
Our chance meeting at the corner led to conversation in which we found out Bob lived just down the street. We mentioned we were high school seniors-to-be trying to keep our mileage up over the summer. Bob was weary of running alone and suggested we get together a few times a week.
So Dave, Mike and I regularly ran to Bob’s house, and we got in some good runs over the remainder of that summer.
After our season started, our training runs ended, but Bob came to watch our first cross-country meet of the season. I wouldn’t see him again for a few years.
Though track and field had a higher profile back then compared to now, its participants had to compete as amateurs. Unlike professional sports, the highest competition for a track and field athlete was the Olympic Games, and only amateurs were allowed. The money that athletes in other sports earned wasn’t possible in track. A couple instances illustrate how informal the sport was back then.
The same year Bob won the Drake Relays open mile, he won an indoor mile race in San Diego in 3:59.5. He was the first British runner to go under 4 minutes indoors. However, to get credit as the British record-holder, he had to get a signed official result from the race referee and send it to the governing body of British track and field. Bob didn’t know he had to do this, thus he never became the official record-holder.
Still in 1972, he ran a 3:39.7 1500 meters (3:57.2 mile conversion), just missing the British outdoor 1500 meter record and qualifying for the British Olympic trials.
Despite his fast time and being a favorite to make the Olympic team, Bob had to skip out because he couldn’t afford the trip back home.
However, I remember reading in the newspaper of a fund-raising effort on the Eastern campus to pay Bob’s travel expenses. It was successful, and Bob flew back and ran in the trials. However, I’m sure he felt he’d let everyone down. He lamented how lousy he’d run in finishing 4th, missing out on the 3-man Olympic team.
Bob had just finished his career at Eastern when we ran into him. He soon went on to Oregon State and earned a masters degree. After that he joined the faculty of Highline Community College south of Seattle and coached track and field.
When I was a student at Washington State University in the late 1970’s, I walked into a pub one Saturday evening and there was Bob sitting at a table. His Highline team had competed in a meet in Pullman, and he was headed home the next day. I joined him at the table, and though I can’t recollect what we talked about, I’m sure it was mostly running stuff.
Bob spent his career at Highline Community College teaching engineering. He was 74 years old.