Monday 27 January 2014

Deek


The year is 1983, the event is the Rotterdam Marathon.  Rob De Castella (Deek) of Australia is breaking the tape in 2.08.37, beating Carlos Lopes by 3 seconds.  The field was stacked with marathon talent - Alberto Salazar, now Mo Farah's coach, then aspiring to be the world number one at the event, was soundly thrashed.

400 metres out these two were well clear and neck and neck - the Portuguese runner was a much faster 10k runner than Deek, having won silver behind Viren in Montreal seven years earlier.  There looked only one possible outcome, there was no way Deek could outkick Lopes.

But he did.

Because he believed he would.

His belief came from his philosophy and Deek's philosophy was simple; he would train better and harder than anyone else.  If it was on the schedule, it got done.  No holes.

He put it like this:

'Nothing gets in the way of my workout.  Nothing.'