Proclaimed the 'fastest man in the world', George McNeill beat greats but was barred from the Olympics.
As he breasted the tape at Wakefield Trinity rugby ground in the spring of 1972, George McNeill let his imagination run away for a moment. He pictured what it would have been like crossing the line ahead of Tommie Smith in the 1968 Olympic final. Smith is immortalised in the images of himself giving the Black Power salute as he collected the gold medal. But that afternoon in Wakefield, it was Smith extending his hand to congratulate McNeill as winner of their showpiece event. McNeill was now downcast having snapped out of his daydream, regretting what could have been.
“I don’t know how I would have done against [Smith] at the Olympics,” he says. “But beating these guys was symbolic for me.”
Back in 1970, McNeill had won the biggest event in professional sprinting, the New Year Powderhall Sprint in Edinburgh, and later that year broke the World Professional Sprint Record for 120 yards with a time of 11.14 seconds. The time equated to 10.14s for the 100m; faster than Jamaican Don Quarrie had run winning the Commonwealth Games gold on the same track a month earlier. Newspapers proclaimed McNeill ‘The Fastest Man in the World’, but he knew that the true test was not in the press, but racing head-to-head out on the track. He would never compete at the Olympics, and nobody would really notice his great wins.
The problem was that athletics was nominally amateur and, as a teenager, McNeill had accepted £4 per week to play football for Hibernian. He soon quit football, but rules were rules, as he discovered when he tried to register with the Scottish Amateur Athletic Association (SAAA). They replied with no letter, just a copy of their rulebook with a section highlighted: ‘anyone who has competed for monetary prize at any time is debarred from amateur competition’.
“The pro game was actually even more amateur,” he tells me. “I once raced at Oxton and the cows had been on the field, so it was hardly showbusiness. And the Wakefield track was just a converted rugby pitch. With the rain hoofing down I’m not sure Tommie Smith knew what was going on.”
Rejected, McNeill set his sights on achieving the Double of pro sprinting. Having won Powderhall in its centenary year, he wanted the other unofficial major, the Stawell Gift, held at Easter in Stawell, Australia. There began a decade-long obsession.
Pro sprinting occupied a curious niche as a true sporting contest marbled with sports entertainment, taken to an extreme when McNeill once won £100 racing against a pony. There were the makeshift tracks, handicap races and pitiful prize money; a vibrant betting scene, secrecy and quirky characters away from the action.
“Most amateurs would not turn pro because they could never afford it,” McNeill says. “At Wakefield I got £100. When they raced ‘amateur’ events, there were envelopes full of cash changing hands.”
The ‘pro’ athletes would try to make money on the side betting on themselves; a tradition of professional sprinting born of its origins in the mining communities in northern England. It meant training had to be kept secret to protect their odds, and McNeill would conceal his form ahead of big events.
“Back in the ‘20s and ‘30s it was big money,” he says. “But for us it was just a bit of fun, and a way to try to make two or three quid back.”
Once, after a big race win, the Inland Revenue pursued McNeill.
“They wanted their cut, but I never knew if I was going to win any money,” he recalls. “In the end they agreed pro sprinting should actually be treated as a hobby.”
The excitement of the racing was maintained by the handicap system. To run the full distance was termed ‘scratch’, and the less accomplished could get a head start of as much as 12 yards. It made for closer finishes, more turnover with the bookies, and gave everyone a chance.
“In the amateurs I saw great runners who never won anything in their lives,” McNeill says. “With the handicap system, hundreds of pro sprinters got their day in the sun.”
He first went to Australia in 1971. It meant three months competing away from his family, and there was disappointment at Stawell. He chased sponsorship to fund successive trips, but found he never performed as well as he did back at home. Only now does he realise his preparation was not the best.
“I was training in below-freezing conditions in Scotland, then would get off the plane in Australia and it was 40 degrees,” he remembers. “I had no idea about dehydration or anything like that.”
McNeill toiled six evenings a week under revolutionary trainer Jim Bradley, fuelled on a diet of honey, steaks and iced buns. Bradley pioneered the use of a boxing speedball to strengthen his athletes’ arms; more important in sprinting than most understood. They were dedicated, but it was nothing compared to the sports science of today.
In Australia, McNeill had befriended several wealthy locals who would accommodate him with his entourage, and sometimes paid for his flights. By 1978 friends Pilmar Smith and Jimmy Caldwell were becoming celebrities at Stawell. The flamboyant characters would dress in tartan and make a scene, and even give interviews to the TV crews who wanted to report on the ‘mad Scotsmen’ hitting all the bookmakers. On one occasion they stood to win $35,000 if their man won.
The hype amused McNeill, but his performances were bringing him down. One year it would be indigestion, then suspected anaemia, or a muscle strain that held him back. But he made the final in consecutive years, and in 1981 had a premonition that this was his time. His poor form meant he wouldn’t have to run the race off scratch, and, as with the 1970 win at Powderhall, this was the centenary at Stawell. He was convinced it was fate.
In the final, with wife Maureen listening to the Australian TV commentary down the phone, McNeill finally achieved his dream. After crossing the line, he wheeled away in jubilant celebration. He could proudly sing Flower of Scotland on top of the podium.
On the flight out of Melbourne, one of his team talked of the crowds who would be waiting to welcome the champion home. McNeill knew that nobody outside of his hometown of Tranent would know or care, but it didn’t matter. He had fulfilled his ambition.
The time away had created strain with Maureen, left to look after their two young sons for several weeks every year. Once, he sold his car to take the family with him, but it became too much. They divorced a few years later.
“I hold my hands up,” he says. “I was very selfish, and very driven. I had become obsessed with winning at Stawell.”
Shortly after the victory he published his autobiography, The Unique Double, and he had already been the subject of a TV documentary entitled The Fastest Man in the World. It closed with a dejected McNeill saying he would rather have the Olympic gold medal that those few months of semi-pro football barred him from pursuing. But today, he is more philosophical.
“I was never bitter, never regretted it in that way – playing for Hibernian as a teenager,” he says. “I just accepted it.”
He won at Powderhall and Stawell, beat Smith and bettered Quarrie, and still holds a clutch of professional world records. These days, he is a popular after-dinner speaker, and last year wrote and performed a one-man show, using photographs, film and his abundant charm to tell the story of his career.
“I’ve always liked to stretch myself,” he says. “Standing on the line in running there’s just you. Speaking is the same. You stand up, and it either goes well or it goes not so well.”
The show sold out Edinburgh’s Brunton theatre for a three-night run. In a faintly predictable mirror of sprinting career, he is taking the show to conquer Stawell next Easter.
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George McNeill wins the 1981 Stawell Gift to complete the 'Unique Double'