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Bryan Smith |
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In a sixteen year ultra-running career, Bryan Smith established himself as the best Australian born ultra runner of the twentieth century. His personal bests ranged from 8 hours and 5 minutes for 100kms, 254kms for 24hrs and 1002kms for six days. He also ran in four Westfield Races finishing with two fourths, a second and a first, which many regard as his finest triumph. Bryan was a Telecom and Telstra linesman for most of his working life, whose work involved traveling much of Victoria and south-eastern Australia, often for weeks at a time on assignment. It was in the seventies when Bryan decided that he had had enough of the night time socializing at the local hotels with the rest of his workmates and he started to occupy his nights away from home with running. His wife, Janet, told me that this soon progressed into running in Fun Runs and then the Big M Melbourne Marathon between 1978 and 1980. Good friend and Hall of Fame inductee, George Perdon, commented many years later that it was a shame that Bryan didn’t get into ultrarunning much sooner as he would have achieved a lot more in the sport. This is probably true because Bryan didn’t run his first ultra event until the mid-80’s when he competed at the Ballarat 50 mile CHASE carnival. He certainly caught up for his late start though by running close to seventy ultras over the next sixteen years. This list of ultra races includes: 6 x 50km races The Colac six race in 1989 is recorded as being run in terrible conditions with the track being reduced to a muddy quagmire for the latter stages of the race, but it was also a race which saw one of the greatest multi-day performances of all time. Bryan ran a total of 1,002 kms and was the third person in history to better the 1000km mark on a track in six days. On his way to completing this great feat he broke thirteen other track records in Australia. Some of these records have only been beaten since by Greek-Australian runner, Yiannis Kouros. Bryan’s best 24hr distance was in 1989 when he ran 254kms at Olympic Park. This was done in a field of world class runners and helped stamp his class amongst other ultra runners around the world. Bryan also represented Australia in an international 24hr challenge at Milton Keynes (UK) one year and ran over 250k. The course was indoors on a hard marble floor and definitely not conducive to good running. Bryan ran over 200km numerous times and would count the 200-210km efforts as being a bad day out. Bryan also won the Victorian 24hr Track championship on three occasions in 1990, 1991 and 2000 (which was his last twenty four hour event). The distances run were 249.881km, 250.729km and 200.703km respectively. Bryan also entered the record books in 1998 at Nanango when he rewrote the Australian 1,000 mile record with a marvelous performance of 11 days and 23 hours. This was also a new Commonwealth and Australasian record. Nanango was well known for its hot oppressive conditions and 1998 was no exception with temperatures varying between 33 and 38 degrees every day. It seemed to be a trait of Bryan’s career that he recorded his best results when the conditions were not exactly favourable! Nanango in 1998 was a remarkable event with Petras Silkinus from Lithuania winning and creating a new world record along with Eleanor Robinson creating a new women’s world record. Bryan continued to write himself into the record books in 1994 when he took part in the Perth to Albany 410km road race and broke eight existing unofficial Australian records on route. These included marks at 300km, 400km, 150 miles, 200 miles. 24hrs, 36hrs, 48hrs and 3 days. An incredible performance indeed. Perhaps Bryan’s greatest triumph was in 1991 when he ran and won the Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon. It was to be the last year that the race was run and some say that the non-appearance of Kouros devalued his win. The truth is that Bryan still won the race in a world class time of Six Days, 12 hours, 50 minutes and 50 seconds. He won the race starting 24 hours behind the rest of the field and collected $60,000 for his efforts. This was made up of $30,000 for fastest time and another $30,000 for being first across the line. The 1991 race definitely had the toughest climatic conditions experienced during the Westfield history along with one of the toughest courses winding its way through some of the snowfields of inland New South Wales and Victoria. Many of the runners were forced out due to the cold and sheer ferocity of the mountains that they were running up. The run wasn’t easy for Bryan as he only grabbed the lead on the last day when he was able to reel in good friend, NSW runner, Tony Collins and claim the first prize. Dr Joe Graiche, who assisted with providing medical advice and assistance for the Westfield for a number of years, believed Bryan was “genetically superior” to the opposition and described him well when he said “ His physical stature, his running technique and his running efficiency are well above anything I have ever seen”. I believe that Bryan’s penchant for hard work and his ability to not let anything faze him, also contributed to his success. It was ten years later in 2001, when Bryan entered the Bernie Farmer/Jessie Riley Trans Australia Footrace. It was put on as an event to help promote Australia’s Federation celebrations and was promised by the organizers that it would bring ultrarunning to the mainstream media and revive the golden “Westfield era”. Tragedy hit the race on the second day of February when Bryan died from a suspected brain aneurism just 2.5kms into the morning stage. It was at 6.20am. He complained of feeling dizzy and then fell to the ground. Fellow runners, Bobby Brown and Paul Every, were twenty metres behind Bryan when he fell and they tried to revive him to no avail. Australia’s greatest ultrarunner was deceased aged fifty seven. Bryan’s wife, Janet, was there crewing for him at the time. One could reflect in hindsight that Bryan left us doing what he loved best, running on the open road! Bryan’s death certainly brought the ultrarunning community together. Runners from all over Australia flew into Melbourne to attend his funeral at Melton. Most of us still remember what we were doing when news of his death was received. Tony Rafferty had to stop working on his assignment when he was phoned by Shaun Scanlon. Godfrey Pollard from Geelong cancelled his golf appointment. Myself, I had to take the rest of the day off when John Timms phoned me at work. I was in a state of shock, but as the AURA Secretary of the time there was a mountain of phone calls to field. Tony Collins read the eulogy at Bryan’s funeral in Melton in 2001, to which there was not a dry eye in the house. One sentence in Tony’s eulogy described him perfectly, “ A quiet achiever and a great ambassador to the sport”. This summed up Bryan tremendously. In researching and writing the Westfield Book, I prepared a list of the twenty best Westfield runners to add as a chapter at the end. I rated Bryan number two on this list after Yiannis Kouros. This rating was backed up by Tony Rafferty and Ron Grant on different occasions. Bryan also gave back to the sport that he loved by crewing and massaging for different runners at races. He crewed for Tony Collins on a couple of occasions during the Sydney to Melbourne and return races, to which Tony described Bryan as a “talented masseur and an excellent crew manager, with a good head for tactics and strategy”. I know that Bryan was always willing to lend an ear to any ultra runner that wanted to run something past him and get his advice. He also had a penchant for remembering people’s names, even this writer’s young daughter. At Colac one year, not having seen her for three years, he remembered her and spent a couple of minutes engaging her in conversation, the mark of a true gentleman. Whilst researching the Westfield book, Bryan sent me a very comprehensive letter which said in part. This was the spirit of Bryan that led AURA and the Colac Six-Day race naming awards in his honour after his passing. These awards are for contribution to the sport and “fairplay, goodwill and sportsmanship”. Both are very apt in remembering Bryan and his contribution to the ultra world. The awards have seen some well deserved winners over the past five years. I for one, feel privileged to have known and met Bryan on many occasions. It’s been an honour to write this short piece which acts as a brief snapshot of his life and his running career. He is definitely a worthy inductee into the AURA “Hall of Fame”. As I have said with previous inductees, there is much more information about Bryan that could fill and make for a very interesting book, but that’s not the purpose of this article. I know that he’ll be up in heaven running around the track, listening to Pink Floyd and Chris Rea and making George Perdon, Cliff Young, Nigel Aylott and other friends work hard for their miles. Bryan’s Personal Best’s
Four Westfield Sydney to Melbourne races for two fourths, a second and a first to his credit. Acknowledgements and References Personal recollections from Bryan’s widow, Janet Compiled by Ultra Historian, Phil Essam, June 2007
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