World Cross Country Championships Men’s Team

New Zealand athletics has historically punched above its weight and boasts a long and rich history in the sport.

Yet, in a collective sense, nothing can match the glory of the triumphant 1975 World Cross Country Championships men’s team, who slayed the might of England, France, Belgium and Spain to stand top of the pile in a competition then regarded as the world’s pre-eminent endurance event.

At that time, New Zealand was riding high on the back of the revolutionary ‘Lydiard philosophy’ of high mileage training, which had helped usher in a period of sustained excellence led by Sir Murray Halberg and Sir Peter Snell in the 1960s and later picked up by the next generation led by Sir John Walker, Dick Quax and Rod Dixon in the 1970s.

On the back of this, New Zealand had for some time been knocking on the door of winning men’s team gold at the annual global cross country event.

At the International Cross Country Championships of 1965 and 1967 – the forerunner of what would later became the World Cross Country Championships – New Zealand’s men had won bronze and silver team medals, respectively.

At the inaugural World Cross Country Championships in 1973, the New Zealand men banked team bronze in Waregem, Belgium with Rod Dixon impressing to take individual bronze.

While nobody was talking up the chances of the nine-strong New Zealand team which travelled out to compete at the 1975 World Cross Country Championships in Rabat, Morocco, it did boast a great blend of youth and experience.

The team’s most senior member was the indefatigable 42-year-old Jack Foster, who the previous year had won the Christchurch Commonwealth Games silver medal in the marathon.

Other more experienced performers included 1970 Commonwealth 1500m silver medallist Dick Quax and Euan Robertson, who placed fifth in the steeplechase at the Christchurch Commonwealth Games.

Kevin Ryan was bang in form having snared the 1974 New Zealand Cross Country and national road race titles, Dave Sirl was a former New Zealand mile champion and John Dixon – brother and coach to Rod, the 1972 Munich Olympic 1500m bronze medallist – was taking time out from his coaching duties to focus on his own running aspirations. Meanwhile, John Sheddan, a late inclusion on the team, went on to more than justify his selection.

Yet the youngest and most exciting member of the New Zealand nine was John Walker, who the previous year had burst onto the scene by running the second-fastest 1500m time in history to win Commonwealth silver behind Filbert Bayi’s world record-breaking run in Christchurch.

The team was skippered by Bryan Rose, the vastly-experienced cross country athlete who was set to make his sixth appearance at the World Cross Country Championships/International Cross Country Championships ten years on from his debut.

“We had a great team in ‘75 and we all worked really well together,” recalls Rose, who at the 1967 International Cross Country Championship in Wales had won individual bronze.

“Back then, New Zealand sent a team every two years to the World Cross and I felt like Rabat would be my last one. We never really spoke of winning the gold medal but we knew we had a very strong team.”

The squad was selected following Kevin Ryan’s victory at the 1974 New Zealand Cross Country Championships. Quax and Walker were added later.

It may seem a little odd today but the inclusion of Walker, who later in 1975 would set a world mile record in Gothenburg and the following year would become Olympic 1500m champion, was a controversial selection. Some sections of the media were vocal at his perceived lack of cross country experience.

Walker himself admits that having his coach, Arch Jelley, on the panel of selectors undoubtedly helped his cause but he felt ready to perform well in Rabat.

“I was in good shape,” Walker recalls. “I’d ran indoors in the US in 1975 and, although some people said it was not good preparation for cross country running, it seemed to work for me. To prove fitness, everyone on the team had to run a sub-30 minute 10,000m time and in California I ran an easy 28:50.”

The squad – minus Quax and Foster who would arrive on the eve of the competition – then flew out to Spain for two weeks of preparation alongside a top-quality New Zealand women’s team skippered by Heather Thomson and which also included Lorraine Moller, Anne Audain, Allison Roe and Dianne Rodger.

Based in an excellent hotel on the Costa Del Sol in Southern Spain and at a regular training facility used by the Swedish athletes, the men’s squad all trained around their individual programmes.

However, what was very evident from the outset, according to Rose, was both the men’s and women’s squads had a great sense of togetherness.

“We had a group of many personalities with different styles and schedules, but we all helped each other out,” he explains. “We gelled really well and this was shown by how it all came together in the race. Many years have passed since we won the gold medal and we don’t see other very often today but on that trip we became friends forever.”

Sirl pitched in as the team masseur while, away from the track, the men’s and women’s teams regularly socialised, which further helped bond the Kiwi athletes.

“We drank a lot of beers and the New Zealand girls wanted to socialise as well,” Walker says. “We all went out as a group and no one was left out.”

This was a point echoed by Dixon who adds: “We all got on very well, enjoyed a great camaraderie, and had a great faith in each other.

“I think that was a big part of our success. We were all on the same page, encouraging and supporting each other.”

In preparation for the World Cross Country Championships, the squad also competed as guests at the Spanish Championships in Seville.

The race was won by the Spanish endurance great Mariano Haro, who had won silver medals at the 1973 and 1974 World Cross Country Championships, but the Kiwi athletes performed impressively.

On a muddy course – which would not have looked out of place in their native New Zealand – Dixon finished 21 seconds adrift in second with Walker justifying his inclusion on the team by placing third.

The race offered genuine encouragement that the team were rounding into form at the right time with Sirl, who finished fifth at the Spanish Championships, recalling the following day’s one-hour-and-20-minute training run as further evidence.

“The run was slightly uphill but in turned out to be more like a race,” he says. “We ran hard up the hill and I finished at the front with John Walker, which proved to me I was in good shape as were most of the squad.”

But the trip was not without its controversies. Team officials took the decision that, rather than take the short flight from Southern Spain to Morocco, to save costs the team should travel 12 hours by a combination of train and boat.

“The officials weren’t popular with us,” Walker recalls. “On the train ride one of the officials had packed our lunches in his suitcase and he said he couldn’t get the lunches out of the case. In the end, we made him do it. At times we rode roughshod over the officials.”

Once arriving in Morocco, the experience was a culture shock for much of the New Zealand team.

Despite staying in the relative comfort of the Rabat Hilton, the lack of convenient food options led many athletes to prefer to buy their own breakfast.

Yet even trips to the local supermarket presented their challenges.

“I thought one morning I’d bought a can of peaches, but when I opened it up it was jam,” Rose recalls.

Sirl admits for much of the trip he survived on a combination of dry rolls and tea – and joked that he was inadvertently ‘carbo-loading’ before the term had even been invented.

And he also recalls one amusing training run he and John Walker experienced in Rabat.

“We were finding it hard to identify a good training spot for some 300m stride outs, when we suddenly found a lovely park with a gradual descent,” Sirl explains. “We managed to complete a couple, only for some guards to then appear and tell us to leave because we were running in the king’s gardens!”

Despite the trip proving challenging, there is little doubt it brought the team closer together and, by race day, both the New Zealand men’s and women’s teams were ready to perform.

The race, held at Souissi Racecourse, would be contested on a mainly-flat six-lap 12km course.

But the stretches of soft sand, warm weather and flat nature of the course, could not have presented a more alien challenge for the Kiwi runners.

“My first impression was that this is not a cross country race, it is more like a track race,” Dixon recalls. “We were used to running on the hills, mud and slush of a typical New Zealand cross country race.” 

The field assembled for the men’s race was dripping with world-class athletic talent. It included three Olympic champions in Belgian Gaston Roelants, Tunisian Mohammed Gammoudi and reigning Olympic marathon champion Frank Shorter. Also entered were European champions Manfred Kuschmann of Germany and Scotland’s Ian Stewart, as well as Finland’s 1973 World Cross Country champion Pekka Paivarinta, plus the aforementioned Spanish superstar Mariano Haro.

With King Hussan II of Morocco in attendance, the New Zealand men’s team lined up in twos at the start with John Walker and John Dixon at the front followed by Dick Quax and Euan Robertson.

The starting gun was fired and more than 200 athletes sprinted furiously with clouds of dust rising as they made their way onto the first 2km loop.

For the New Zealand team, Walker and Robertson quickly took a prominent order towards the front while the other Kiwis started to pack well.

But, as Rose admits, it was far from an easy task.

“My main memory was the sheer pace of the race,” he says. “It really took me by surprise. It was absolutely frenetic.”

For Kevin Ryan, who had been struggling on and off for much of the trip with a stomach bug, his race-day experience proved one to forget.

After quickly moving into the top 20, he later slipped down the field as stomach issues re-emerged. He also recalls it was difficult to maintain momentum through some sections of the course.

“On the middle of each lap, we were diverted to run through big craters which had been dug out with front end diggers,” he explains. “There were other jumps that were just deep holes which had been dug out. These gradually got wider and once the edges broke off they become difficult to run through, especially if you were running directly behind another runner.”

At the head of the race, Walker was among the early medal contenders along with American Bill Rodgers, Stewart and Haro, only for the Kiwi to suddenly get an untimely stitch.

The pain he felt caused him to slow. He quickly dropped off the lead group and was caught by his team-mate, Robertson.

“Euan Robertson came past me and said, ‘what’s the problem?’,” Walker says. “I said to him ‘you go’ but he said, ‘no, I’ll wait for you.’ Euan probably cost himself a higher placing, preferring to slowly pace me back towards the front of the field.”

While Robertson was guiding Walker back into contention, a little further down the field the Kiwis were revealing their strong sense of unity and desire to perform as well as possible in the team event.

A group of five Kiwis were placed between 20^th and 40^th place – John Dixon, Bryan Rose, Dave Sirl, John Sheddan and Jack Foster – and as Dixon recalls: “I remember as we looped back on the field on different points of the course, I would see another Kiwi athlete and yell out at them in support.”

Walker and Robertson never quite made it back to the front of the pack as Scotland’s Ian Stewart struck gold with Haro in silver and Rodgers, the long-time leader, winning bronze.

Yet, given the stitch and his lack of cross country experience, Walker produced a gargantuan effort to finish fourth in 35:45 – 25 seconds behind Stewart. Just one second further back in fifth was Robertson, who produced a heroic performance, particularly given his selfless pacing of Walker.

However, in order to ensure team gold, they needed other athletes to deliver and, thankfully on this day in Rabat, the boys did not disappoint.

The next Kiwi home was Sirl in 25^th – one place in front of Dixon. The two counters in the New Zealand team were John Sheddan and Bryan Rose in 33^rd and 34^th, respectively.

Foster was 36^th while Ryan wound up 72^nd with Quax having a rare off-day to place 113^th.

For team skipper Rose, the race had proved an emotional experience.

“The 12km seemed to go by in a flash,” he recalls. “It was one the hardest races of my career and I was so knackered as I crossed the line, I burst into tears. I’d thrown everything into it. It was totally exhausting.”

Sirl recalls the Welsh team were the first to offer their hand of congratulations post-race on the assumption that New Zealand had struck gold in the team competition.

“But we don’t count our chickens…we recover and wait,” Sirl wrote at the time in a personal diary. “At least 20 minutes goes by before an official list of the top 40 is distributed to the various teams. We scan the list adding up the points with the assistance of officials and crikey, we’ve won!”

The New Zealand men’s team had conquered the world with an emphatic victory. The Kiwis had scored 128pts to finish a long way clear of England (198pts) in silver with Belgium in bronze (211pts).

In a further illustration of the strength in depth of New Zealand distance running at that time, the Kiwi women won silver in their teams race, finishing just six points behind gold medallists the USA. The women’s individual placings were as follows: Lorraine Moller (5), Heather Thomson (6), Anne Audain (10), Allison Roe (29) and Dianne Rodger (51). 

The jubilant team then returned back to the Hilton Rabat for the post-race reception and presentation before celebrating with the US team until the early hours of the morning to toast their success.

“It was a euphoria,” Bryan recalls of the team winning gold. “I don’t think it really sunk in until much later. It was quite a comprehensive win, although I don’t think our achievement was ever given the credence it deserved. The English, French and Belgians had dominated for years and to beat them was a massive achievement.”

But the day had a tinge of frustration, according to Rose. The team had not been given their gold medals during the official presentation and it was only later that night that the six scoring members of the team received their reward. Meanwhile, the three non-scoring athletes – Ryan and the now deceased Foster and Quax – have never been given medals.

“It was a bit sad they were not given any recognition and, from that perspective, it was very disappointing,” Rose adds.

Post-race, much of the team headed back to New Zealand to little fanfare, although Walker, Robertson and Rose were invited to compete at the historic Cinque Mulini cross country race in Italy. Walker performed with typical class to finish second but had to concede defeat to his Tanzanian rival Filbert Bayi, who had beaten Walker to gold with a 1500m world record at the previous year’s Commonwealth Games.

But the final word belongs to Walker who explains: “I always maintain it was the only chance we ever had of winning the World Cross Country team gold and, given the dominance today of the African nations, we will probably never win it again. I’m pleased with how the guys ran as a team and for the girls to finish second as well made it a memorable day.”

Written by Steve Landells