My London Marathon love-in!
by John Cushing, April 2023
The London Marathon was always something I'd watched on TV growing up. It was a rare Sunday we didn't have to go the morning church service, and sometimes the Marathon was excuse enough as a youngster. Ingrid Kristiansen winning every year was my first real memory - like the Martina Navratilova Steffi Graf era at Wimbledon - incredible stamina and speed and brilliant to see her back this year to start the women's Elite Race. As Michael mentioned in our special podcast, Tanni Grey Thompson was also front and centre and our first experience of Para sport at that time. So for many years it was just part of the brilliant Spring sporting calendar alongside the Grand National, Boat Race and World Snooker.
Then I started work in London, at the commercial radio station Heart 106.2 as was, in late November 2000, it was in my mind to see if I could 'work it'. Not run it - I'd never do that - running is bad for the joints, like ski-ing is bad for breaking your legs, and I was useless at Cross Country at school, however give me a baton on the 3rd leg of the 4x100m relay and I'd fly round the bend! Anyway I digress. My first experience of covering the London Marathon for radio soon came, as I was asked to cover it in April 2001. I was given the task of watching from pub, and reporting back into bulletins and making it about the spectacle not just the race. Its one of the many things I love about the LM, it's what's happening on the side of the streets, and knowing about the many thousands of fundraisers, as well as knowing who wins! So I was sent to the Highway, as you get to see them going out to Canary Wharf and in some cases struggling to come back too! In those days you need a good old fashioned radio car to broadcast back to radio, none of this flashy 5G on a mobile we'll be using this weekend. As the pub was set a little back from the road, and not being the tallest sports reporter out there, my colleague and engineer Dave suggested I stood on the radio car roof to watch and scream 30 seconds down the line every half an hour. So there I was, reporting on my first marathon, clambering around on the roof, just a year before Brian May did it for the Golden Jubilee at the Palace!
2003 was special, Paula Radcliffe breaking the women's world record, and I'd also realised if I actually wanted to watch the race it was better to report on the Marathon from the safety of the studio, watching on TV and with other people out and about feeding the stories back!
A few years later, colleague, and now Channel 5 Royal Correspondent Simon Vigar ran the Marathon - I'll always remember the next morning him struggling to walk the flight of stairs to the Heart studio! He's doing it again this year, the marathon not the stairs, for Wellbeing of Women in memory of his mum.
2012 I was out and about again - a test of London pre-Olympics - and I spent quiet a lot of time at Tower Bridge from memory trying to get a signal back to send audio for the radio stations that now included LBC and Classic FM, not just Heart! London passed with flying colours as it often does and certainly did that summer!
So onto this year, I'm back covering the event for Radio NewsHub who deliver commercial radio stations bulletins throughout the UK and across the globe. I can't wait to tell some of the stories and get across some of the excitement. We've spoken to Olympic champion Eve Muirhead and Paralympic champ Richard Whitehead who are raising funds for Doddie Aid and the Whitehead Foundation. So yes the build up as been dominated by potential protests, but knowing London and the London Marathon at that I'm convinced it'll be a special day, raising stacks of cash for good causes and rightly back in its April slot! Roll on 20 odd more years!
