Cliff Young (athlete)

Albert Ernest Clifford Young OAM (8 February 19222 November 2003) was an Australian athlete from Beech Forest, Victoria. A farmer, he became notable for his unexpected win of the inaugural Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon in 1983 at 61 years of age.

Early life

Young was born the eldest son and the third of seven children of Mary and Albert Ernest Young on 8 February 1922. He grew up on a farm in Beech Forest in southwestern Victoria. The family farm was approximately with approximately 2,000 sheep. As a child, Young helped to round up the stock on foot, as the family were very poor during the great depression and could not afford horses.

Running and ultramarathons

In 1979, at the age of 56, he competed in the Adidas Sun Superun race which crossed the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne. He ran the race at a very respectable 64 minutes and was interviewed by the media.

Cliff then ran the Melbourne Marathon with a time of 3:21:41 in 1979. He would go on to compete in 1980, 1981, and 1982, setting a personal best of 3:02:53 in 1980, aged 58.

In late 1982, after training for months around the Otway Ranges, Young attempted to break New Zealander Siegfried "Ziggy" Bauer's then world record for of 11 days and 23 hours. The attempt took place in Colac's Memorial Square. Young had to abandon the world record attempt just after halfway at . Reflecting on the failed attempt, Young wrote that he and his support team were inexperienced and ill-prepared.

In 1983, now aged 61 years old, Young won the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, a distance of . The race was run between what were then Australia's two largest Westfield shopping centres: Westfield Parramatta in Sydney and Westfield Doncaster in Melbourne. Young arrived to compete in overalls and work boots (though he ran the race in a new pair of runners somebody gave him), without his dentures (later saying that they rattled when he ran). He ran at a slow and loping pace and trailed the pack by a large margin at the end of the first day. While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours, Young mistakenly woke up at 2 am, several hours earlier than intended, and began running, taking the lead while the other runners slept. Young then decided to avoid sleep as a strategy, and finished the rest of the race without sleeping at all, eventually finishing in 1st place 10 hours faster than the runner who came in secon

Before running the race, he had told the press that he had previously run for two to three days straight rounding up sheep in gumboots. He said afterwards that during the race he imagined he was running after sheep trying to outrun a storm. The Westfield run took him five days, fifteen hours and four minutes, almost two days faster than the previous record for any run between Sydney and Melbourne, at an average speed of . All six competitors who finished the race broke the old record. Upon being awarded the prize of , he recalled, “The prize money of ten thousand dollars! Now that’s a helluva lot of potatoes. There were only 11 starters, so I thought I had a chance of getting something and I finished up getting the lot. Joe Record and I had a pact on before we ran that if either of us won we would split the prize money between us. I forgot about Joe and started giving it away left, right and center. I gave $4,000 away to the other runners. So I said to Joe here’s your half of the spoils. He said “Hmm $3,000? I thought the prize was $10,000.” I said “I give the lot away. Don’t worry about it.” “He wasn’t that concerned” Renowned for his ungainly running style, Young ran more than 20,000 kilometres during his competitive career. After five years of illness and several strokes, he died of cancer at the age of 81 on 2 November 2003 at his home in Queensland.

A memorial in the shape of a gumboot in Beech Forest is dedicated to Young and the Cliff Young Drive and Cliff Young Park there are named after him.

"Young Shuffle"

The "Young Shuffle" has been adopted by some ultramarathon runners because it expends less energy. At least three winners of the Sydney-to-Melbourne race were known to use the "Young Shuffle" to win the race. In 2010, comedian Hannah Gadsby named their Sydney Comedy Festival show "The Cliff Young Shuffle" in tribute.

''Cliffy'' telemovie

In May 2013, ABC1 broadcast ''Cliffy'', a telemovie about Young's victorious 1983 run. The telemovie starred Kevin Harrington as Young, with his race support team played by Roy Billing as his coach Wally, and Joshua Hine as Paul. Krew Boylan featured as Mary Howell. Young's mother and sister Eunice were played by former ''A Country Practice'' stars Joan Sydney and Anne Tenney.

Cast

* Kevin Harrington as Cliff Young
* Roy Billing as Wally
* Joshua Hine as Paul
* Krew Boylan as Mary Howell
* Joan Sydney as Mum
* Anne Tenney as Eunice
* Martin Sacks as Sid
* Denise Roberts as Molly
* Stephen Curry as Griffin
* Gyton Grantley as Powell
* Marty Fields as Ted
* Spencer McLaren as Race Official
* Peter Cousens as TV host

Prisoner Cell Block H

Young also appeared briefly as himself in one episode (No. 479) of the television drama '' Prisoner: Cell Block H''. He was there as a special guest to support the prisoners who were completing a dance marathon world record attempt as part of a storyline to raise money for a children's deaf charity.

References

External links

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Cliff Young Rest in Peace

{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, Cliff
1922 births
2003 deaths
Australian ultramarathon runners
20th-century Australian farmers
Deaths from cancer in Queensland
Otway Ranges
Sportspeople from Victoria (state)
Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia
Australian male long-distance runners
Male ultramarathon runners
20th-century Australian sportsmen
Farmers from Victoria (state)