It's come to my attention what a frickn great athlete Dixon was, if it wasn't for boycotts and the faux ameteur status of the sport during his career I think he would have some WR's and more Olympic hardware to show for it.
What I love about a Dixon was how hard he ran trained and raced look at his stats he was one of the only guys to beat Rono at his peak, but was also a social animal him and walker talk about filling a bath with beers after every race. He was also great mates with PRE whom is such a legend.
I've also heard that for long runs Dixon used to just grab his rifle and go for 5-6 hour jogs through the bush deer hunting, occaisionally scamming some food off other bush walkers.
Here are some of my favourite Dixon stories from the boards.
The quote to end all... "all I want to do is drink beer and train like an animal"
800m 1min 47.6s
1500m 3min 33.89s
Mile 3min 53.62s
2 mile 8min 14secs
3,000m Steeplechase 8min 29s
5000m 13min 17.3s
10,000m 28min 11.0s
Marathon 2h 8min 59s
Interview with Rod Dixon
By Bob Babbitt
Rod Dixon was honored as a Running Legend at the 12th annual Competitor Magazine Endurance Sports Awards on February 7, 2004. His range as a runner was pretty amazing. He won a bronze medal at 1500 meters in 1972 in Munich and eleven years later won the New York City Marathon in one of the most exciting come-from-behind finishes in marathon history. Dixon came on the Competitors, our weekly radio show on The Mighty 1090, to chat about his career. Duathlon champion and cyclist extraordinare Paul Thomas sat in with Bob Babbitt to discuss the career of one of the all-time greats.
Bob Babbitt: Rod, to race at a world class level for so many years at so many distances you had to have a lot of confidence in yourself. Where did that come from?
Rod Dixon: I developed confidence from my brother who was my coach. Sometimes when you feel you need your coach and his support the most, he is 20,000 miles away, which was very hard. But wonderfully, he had conditioned me to be prepared for tough moments during training. He would tell me we’re going for a two-and-one-half hour run and we’re going to be picked up at the end. I’d be running along thinking this is it, we’re just about done. The car would pull up, he’d get in the car and say, “Now you can run home.” There were moments where he really did say to me, if the going’s going to get tough, this is where you get going. One time we’d done twenty quarters at the average of 65 seconds with a maybe minute-twenty recovery and he says, “Could you do another one at that pace?” And I’d say, “Yes.” And he would say, “Well, go do it.”
Paul Thomas: He made sure you were prepared for anything and everything.
RD: But there were other times when he’d say, “Yeah, that’s it. That’s the end of the session.”
BT: When you look back to 1972, is that when you met Steve Prefontaine?
RD: I met him in London just after the Olympics. It was at the International Athletics Club track meet . He’d run the 5,000, of course, in 1972 and took fourth. We were down for the two mile in Crystal Palace.
PT: You didn’t become buddies right away?
RD: Not quite
PT and BB: (laughter)
RD: I was a 1500 meter runner and he was a 5,000 meter man. Two miles was a long way to go for me at that point in my career. With 200 meters to go I went past him. I set a New Zealand record and Pre set an American record. It was an incredible race. I went to shake Pre’s hand and he refused. I sat behind him and outkicked him for the win. Pre came up to me and he told me ‘If you ever do that again, I’ll kick your Kiwi ass.”
BB: When was your next meeting?
RD: It wasn’t until the next year, in 1973, when we went back to Europe that I came up against him in another two mile in Stockholm. This was a world record attempt. With two laps to go, we were world-record pace. I won the race in 8:14:4 which is about .4 off the world record. And once again Pre did everything, but with 300 meters to go, four of us went past him and moved on.
The next time I came across Pre was in Milan.
PT: Was he friendly this time?
RD: We went down to the dining room in the hotel there and I remember Pre was sitting with Ralph Mann, who was the Silver Medalist from the hurdles. John Walker and I walked into the dining room and Pre was sitting there with like a liter bottle of beer in front of him. He stood up and he said, “Not the f*&^^%$ Kiwis,” as we walked in.
Ralph Mann said, “Why don’t you guys join us and have something to eat?” And of course, it was a little bit of the old, you know, I’ll buy a beer, you buy a beer arrangement.
BB: Right.
RD: I think we all staggered up to our rooms. But we’d said we were going to run at eight o’clock in the morning. And we were there, the three of us: John Walker, myself, and Steve Prefontaine and off we went for this two-hour run in the heat of the day.
BB: And you’re all just sweating beer.
RD: Yeah. It was great. Pre would push, we would push, Pre would push. But the beauty was that when Walker would push, I would sit; I would push, Walker would sit. But Pre pushed every time. During that run we developed a respect for each other that lasted forever. Nothing had to be said. Two days later I watched him run a workout. He ran a 3:58 mile, took seven minutes recovery and ran a 3:57.
PT: He became a good friend.
RD: I loved the guy. He was an amazing athlete. And in fact from 1973 until his tragic death I raced Pre more than any other person. We had some amazing races. We were always setting American records, New Zealand records, Commonwealth records and meet records. Then at night it was a few beers and training the next day. It was wonderful.
BB: When you look back at the legend of Henry Rono, what type of athlete was he?
RD: He was in his day the best runner in the world. Wine, women and song got in the way. It’s sad, because Henry had so much talent. I remember a race in Italy. It was an absolute downpour during the 5,000. Lane one was absolutely flooded, but we persisted to run in it. Henry was in lane three and ran 13.17 and he was 15 seconds ahead of us.
PT: (laughter). You know what, he ran about 5,100 meters.
BB: I heard that one time he came to Australia for a tour. Didn’t the promoter find him before the big meet just lying in the lobby of the hotel?
RD: That’s right. The meet was postponed and Henry went down to a local bar and started drinking.
He went off somewhere for two days on a drinking binge. Somebody found him and delivered Henry in an absolute coma back to the hotel into the lobby. And I remember Andy Norman, the meet promoter from England finding him. Andy said to Henry, “You are going back to African unless you can pull yourself together. You come down to the track at four o’clock in the afternoon.” I went down there and Andy had him run ten quarters.
PT: How fast did he go?
RD: An average of 60 seconds per quarter with 20 seconds recovery. Henry threw up at least four times, but he did it. Four days later Henry was a lap down almost 5,000 meters into the 10,000 meters. He looked back and saw the leaders about to go by him. Suddenly it looked like somebody lit a bloody fire under him. Henry took off and won the race in 27:39.
PT: He made up 400 meters?
RD: He made up 400 meters and went on to run 27:39, which was the season’s best time until about August of that year and this was back in March. Extraordinary.
PH: 27.39. There’s about maybe five Americans that have ever run that fast. Speaking of times, your range was unbelievable. You ran 800 meters in 1:47.6., 1,500 meters in 3:33.80, the mile in 3:53.62, 5K in 13:17, 10K in 28:10 and the marathon in 2: 08.59.
PT: So Rod, the move to the marathon, when did you first start thinking about that?
RD: Well, it was my great mate Fred Lebow from the New York City Marathon. He was in Rome in 1982 when I got a bronze medal in the World Cross Country. And Fred said to me, “You have to run a marathon.” I said “That’s what every American is telling me. Look Fred, I don’t think it’s going to be this year, but it certainly will be soon. In late 1982 I set the World Half-Marathon record and that kind of set me to thinking. Then I went to the New York City Marathon in 1982 to watch. That was the great race between Alberto Salazar and Rudolfo Gomez.
PT: What did you think?
RD: I watched that race in pure bloody amazement and saw what it took to run the marathon. I watched tapes of the world championship marathon two or three times and then I watched Salazar’s tape again and again. I started to understand what it was going to take to run a marathon. I knew to train for it I would need total focus. I used to love racing on the weekends. I’ve got to go in and hunker down in Pennsylvania and just train. And so began the incredible journey. I started to live it, eat it and sleep it. Every minute of my day was focused on running this marathon. As that time came about, I started to really get enthusiastic about it and it really started to flow through my veins. I was starting to believe in myself. For the first time I really believed in what I was doing was the right pathway. And I’ll never forget when I took the plane from Redding, Pennsylvania off to New York. I passed out over the fields and the countryside below and I could see the golf course I trained on and the state forest. I had a feeling contentment and I was prepared to live with the consequences.
BB: Because you knew you did everything. You did everything you could do.
RD: Exactly. I was at peace with myself. I had been disappointed in other races, I’d had highs and lows. I suddenly realized that this is the best I can be. I was the best prepared I could ever be. I still recall standing there when the mayor pulled the cannon, the last thought in my mind was that I had done everything in my power to be here in the best condition that I could ever be in. I could live with myself no matter what happened. It was an incredible journey from that point on, an amazing journey. I only caught Geoff Smith at mile 26.
BB: Now, what’s interesting, Rod, is that you had raced Geoff Smith a number of times and had never ever lost to the guy. When Smith still had that lead coming in to those last few miles, you must have been thinking there’s always a chance.
RD: I never let go of that final thread. Up until then, I was right on target. I think Competitor ran a photograph of my hand one year, I always used to write my hoped for time splits on my fingers.
BB: That was us!
RD: And going through from the thumb to my little finger, five, ten, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-three. I was right on with my splits and my confidence was building. However, there was still this guy two hundred yards ahead of me. There was a guy on a bike giving me half- mile splits. And those half-mile splits were bringing Geoff back by a second or two seconds each time. I realized I was going to run out of road. What I had to do was to get Jeff to give me some seconds. I couldn’t run any faster than I was. Wonderfully Geoff started giving me seconds, which meant that if I could stay on pace, I was going to catch him around Columbus Circle. It was a little bit after that, in fact right on the 26-mile marker.
PT: What were you running your last few miles in?
RD: Around 4:56 to five minutes. Geoff was a tough customer. Just a tough, gritty, mean bastard. But a delightful man for a beer after the race. I would never shake someone’s hand before a race. But afterwards we’d always go out for beer or dinner.
BB: Because you still had to beat him?
RD: You didn’t shake your competitors hand because all they wanted was your energy.
RD: Runners are superstitious. It was funny little things that we lived with. Some runners would only race in one pair of socks. John Walker was funny because John always had to have lower number than me when we raced.
BB: Really?
RD: Yeah. And of course they would always give the numbers out alphabetically, so I always got a lower number than John.
BB: Sure.
RD: Come to race time, John got a lower number.
BB: He would go to the race director?
RD: Yeah. He went to the race director and got him to give him a lower number.
BB: You caught Geoff Smith at about mile 26 and at that point he was pretty much gone?
RD: Sure, he was gone at five-minute mile pace.
BB: He was still running at five-minute pace?
RD: 5:05.
BB: What was the time difference at the end?
RD: I think it was nine seconds.
BB: My favorite is the photograph. Rod is just exultant, blowing kisses to the crowd. It’s probably one of the classic marathon photos of all time. Geoff Smith is sprawled behind him right on the finish line. To come from behind and to have a day like that where everything turned out exactly the way you wanted it to. Man, the feeling at the end must have been unbelievable.
RD: I must admit, Geoff and I are great mates even to this day. Geoff came in, collapsed and by the time I looked back they had him in the medical tent. I had to do my interviews and then I went down to see Geoff. I embraced Geoff and told him that it was a helluva of a great run.
BB: How long did you run against John Walker? And, like you mentioned earlier, it’s hard to be friends with somebody when you have to try to beat them. But you guys were together for so long.
RD: We had a tribute recently for John because he is sadly afflicted with Parkinsons and it is starting to close in on him When I was asked to say something, I just said that John and I lived and trained together all the time. I got married in 1974 and spent more time in a bedroom with Walker in 1975 than I did my own wife.
BB: (laughter)
RD: That’s what we had to do to make a living. We had to leave our shores and go and live and train. Through all those years we never had a moment of disagreement. John and I knew too, that when it came to stepping on the line, everything was pushed aside. And I did everything to beat John. In 1975, in his incredible year, we had 32 wins and one loss.
BB: Thirty-two wins in one year?
RD: Thirty-two wins. And that one loss was to me I just happened to put in a good one and I beat him. John wonderfully came over and said, “You beat me fair and square and that’s what it’s all about. You put your ass on the line.”
BB: I remember talking with tennis legend Charlie Pasarell. He was roommates with Arthur Ashe and he said they would travel together, rent a car together, share a hotel room and then and get up in the morning and try to kick each other’s butt. And then get back into the rental car, drive back to the airport, and go on to the next city and do it all over again. That’s basically what you and Walker were doing.
RD: Whoever won filled the bathtub with beer….. and John was always filling the bathtub.
BB: (laughter)
RD: It was more often than not, I can tell you that!
BB: That’s great.
RD: This is funny. One summer John and were traveling through Europe with a few of the Kenyans. And one of the guys would always ask for $753 in appearance fees. I couldn’t figure it out. Why not $750 or $800. He told me it was the price of a cow in Kenya. So by the end of the summer he’d have about 20 cows!
I was on a run with Dixon and he told me the following story. He said, I always timed my own workouts, let me tell you why.
He was in Europe racing and had a mile race on Saturday. On Thursday of that week he went to the track and ran a workout alone. When he finished John Ngeno, the first good Kenyan to run at Washington State, showed up to run a work out. Rod asked him what he was doing and it was something like 8 X 400 in 60. Dixon offered to time him. That was before the digital wrist watches. John said okay and he was off.
John runs the first one in 60 seconds; after he crosses the line Dixon said 64. John picks the next one up and runs 58, Dixon tells him 62. The next one is 57, Dixon tells him 61. The remaining 400’s were all around 56 to 57 and Dixon is telling him right on.
They get to the race on Saturday and Dixon goes blowing by John in the last 300 and wins the race. John complained that he felt dead.
Dixon is busting a gut as he was telling me, John left it all in the workout.