Charlie Spedding was a member of the great Gaateshead team of the 70's which included such as Brendan Foster, Geoff Turnbull and company. Many of them, including Geoff, subsequently left to form Valli but the Gateshead team was superb. Masterminded by Stan Long with Lindsay Dunn also one of the mainstays they carried all before them. Spedding was the last Briton to wn an Olympic medal for the marathon when he was third in 1964. Like almost all of his generation he is quite critical of the present generation of distance runners. He cracks the well worn joke about the last Briton to win the Great North Run being a Kenyon! Steve Kenyon that is of Salford.
He is now 57 and runs a pharmacy in Wallsend and has written his life story in "From First To Last" which is well worth a read. It is priced at a more than reasonable £8:99 and is available from www.charliespedding.com
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Yes. I think the date was 1984 or Charlie was only 12 years old when he won Olympic bronze
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