London 2012 blog

The marriage of sport and art is a regular topic in our part of the 2012 Team. Perhaps that is why the Director of Culture, Ceremonies and Education found himself entered for the recent “Great North Run”. That’ll be me then!

There was the odd moment along the 13 mile course when this didn’t feel like such a good idea. At the eight miles point  a man dressed as a 12ft tall daffodil overtook me with ease. At eleven miles, as the course winds its way from Gateshead to South Shields, the crafty race planners throw in a hill – not just any hill – the kind of hill that goes on for ever and has false brows. Like the mirage of a spa bath in the middle of the desert, each summit simply dissolves as a higher one appears over the horizon. Some people might be a tad embarrassed that a man in his late 70s finished half an hour before me. But then it was the amazing Christopher Chattaway (who broke the four minute mile in 1955).

Indeed as I gasped over the finishing line (in a gentlemanly two hours, six minutes) it might not have been the perfect moment to celebrate this as participation in a great cultural event – but after a hot shower, a rub down with the Radio Times and few days of achy calf muscles, I can now contemplate whether that is what it is.

Fifty thousand runners make the Great North Run one of the biggest participatory runs in the world. At the elite end of the line this is pure sport – world records are broken and careers are made. But when you get to the seething mass of humanity in the rest of the field the motivations are more complex. For some it is about sheer camaraderie. Others are driven to raise huge sums for charity, or simply to run in memory of a lost family member. The unifying factor is the shared sense of going the extra mile – literally. The satisfaction of  testing yourself up to and just beyond the limit – and doing it with thousands of fellow travellers. It is something that Baron De Coubertin would have been proud of.

The television images of fifty thousand runners setting off together are as awe inspiring as any I can imagine. And it is not by chance that the run passes through the spectacular setting that the middle of Newcastle and Gateshead now offers – the shimmering Sage Arts Centre, the elegant new Millennium Footbridge and the iconic Tyne Bridge.

The Great North Run team have created their own vibrant culture programme. In the Baltic Contemporary Art Centre I watched Suky Bests fantastic animated film “About Running” and Michael Nyman was inspired to create a new musical work entitled “50,000 pairs of feet can’t be wrong”.  But perhaps the most powerful cultural contribution comes from hundreds of thousands of local people who line the route. In the leafy suburbs and in the tough council estates, in the city centre cafes and the industrial complexes the people of Tyneside turn the race into a theatrical performace with an audience as excited as any Oscar Show. They cheer endlessly, children shake thousands of runners sweaty hands, they play music, they cut fruit to feed us and I’m particularly grateful to the man who extended his garden hose to stretchy way out into the road and offer me a refreshing shower of ice cold water.
   
But does this make it sport – or art? Coubertin would have seen it all as Olympic and I’ll settle for that (now pass me the muscle relief please…is it normal that 2 weeks on I’m still in pain?)