There can be little doubt that this week’s featured profile is the one who has probably done most to stabilise athletics in the extreme west of the County which has had a rather chequered time through most of the twentieth century.
In the mid war period Littlehampton and Chichester produced a few good athletes but the Post War period George Dinmore, who I believed, was a Canadian who remained in England after 1945 and formed the Bognor Regis Athletic Club in 1948 and with the likes of Roger Wardale and Dennis Drinkwater, made good progress promoting meetings that were well supported by Sussex clubs and they produced a range of good athletes of both sexes and established senior teams that could hold their own with most other Sussex teams.
In the late sixties Dick Keating re-launched Chichester Athletic Club with support of local Business men and throughout all this time the Chichester Boys and the Girls High Schools continued to turn out top class athletes many of whom made it to the English Schools Championships.
Phil Baker, who was born on 31st January 1946 at Chichester and went to the Chichester High School for Boys, set up the Chichester Runners at the start of the Road Running boom nearly 40 years ago and now they cater for a wide range of athletics producing teams for the all age groups as well as the Southern League. He was married to Sue in 1977 and has one girl and two boys.
“My actual competitive running career was comparatively short lasting, just 7 years. As a keen schoolboy footballer it was only on going to University in Exeter in 1964 that I started to run at all seriously. I happened to share digs in my first year with the Secretary of the University Cross Country club and competed in my 3 years there in various Devon Cross Country leagues as well as the old version of the BUCS. A year teaching in Harrogate was followed by a year’s Teacher Training at Oxford University where I managed blues in both cross country and athletics beating the enemy (Cambridge) on each occasion. The University Athletics match was on cinders at the White City (shades of Kuts v Chataway) and was even shown on BBC Grandstand, both images from another era.”
At the White City he ran in the three-miles and finished third.
Much of his athletics successes were largely unknown in Sussex as he lived at Chichester and he joined the Portsmouth Athletic Club as competition for Cross-country running was sparse, to say the least, in the sixties and seventies at that end of the County.
For a few years he was a regular at the Sussex senior cross-country championships and several times he made it into the Sussex teams for the Inter-county championships.
I used to get home for Christmas and ran in the Sussex Senior cross-country championship in 1969-70 and 71 finishing in the top six and qualifying to run for Sussex in the prestigious Inter-counties Championships where, in those days most of the top English Cross-country internationals would run.” At this time I would sometimes runs in the Boxing Day races in Brighton and were surprised at the pace of the leading runners.
Phil’s best run in the Inter-counties was 35th place in 1971 and that was an excellent run as many athletes would go to this event in the hope of scraping in the top one hundred places.
“I was introduced to Portsmouth AC by a friend and continued to run for them in club competitions. From memory my best positions were both in 1971 with 16th in the Southern at Parliament Hill, 30th in the National at Norwich and 35th in the Inter Counties.”
Phil went to Oxford University and in 1969 gained a Blue as a member of the Oxford team in the Inter-Varsity Cross-country championship when it was a prestigious high class race.
Ironically in that year Brighton & Hove’s John Hazleden was one of the many talented athletes from Varndean Grammar School was collecting a Blue as Captain of the Cambridge University team but Phil can’t remember whether or not he beat Hazelden but he probably did as Oxford runners dominated the event and Phil placed seventh out of the 16 runners.
“On the roads I managed 49.45 in the Wimbledon 10, keeping up with the Holt twins for 8 miles and sadly was just outside the magic barrier of 24 mins for 5 miles with a 24.03 clocking at High Wycombe won by Allan Rushmer – I have still got the Ercol table which the locally based furniture company gave as prizes”.
“On the track I was “encouraged to do 800’s and 1500’s in club matches to gain speed, the 800 metres in particular being a brutal event for someone with no upper body strength. From memory I think I won both the Sussex 5000 metres and steeplechase in 1970, evergreen Peter Witcomb also running in the 5000 metres. My best that summer was 14.10 for the 5000 metres run on an athletics tour to Scandinavia”. This is still a very good time for Sussex athletes.
“Alas, after a decent winter in 1970/71, I donned my spikes for the first track session in April 1971 and found I could not bend my big toe (Hallux Rigidus for the medically minded). A missed summer was followed by an operation in November but my priorities changed the following summer in taking over the family business in Chichester and deciding to just do recreational running and play competitive squash instead. Ironically Dave Bedford came to do his Teaching Practice at Kingston Grammar school in the spring of 1972 where I was teaching at the time so just had to watch him with a foot in plaster”.
After moving back to Chichester in 1972, it was about a decade later that I began to meet a few like-minded fun runners at local events and in 1984 a few of us decided to form a club in Chichester to encourage middle distance running”.
“At first we had about a dozen of us, all seniors, and our aspirations as a club were quite limited”.
It was about the turn of the Century when Phil took over the organisation of the Sussex Cross-country League from Dave Ollie and still continues in that role and during that time the number of runners has swell from just over a couple of hundred to regular fields of more than five hundred. Covid may stop us holding any events this season.
“Fast forward to 2020 and with a membership of over 500 the club is very different and way beyond what we envisaged all those years ago, both in the wide range of ages and the variety of what we can offer”.
“My involvement in the Sussex scene began with entering teams in Cross Country and road events from 1985 and then starting to host events at Goodwood from the 1990’s with our first league race almost a wash-out with rivers of mud running down the usually firm Goodwood course”.
“With cross country as my favourite part of our varied sport, I have been grateful of the support I have received to lead the county panel in recent years and am delighted that the enthusiasm from across Sussex is as strong as ever”.
“Let us hope that we can get back to competition in the near future“.
Chichester as a club branched out into track and field in 1994 by entering the Southern Men’s League and a couple of years later the national Youth leagues. One of my most vivid memories was our introduction to the Sussex under 13 league and the 10 club Final in particular and it is thanks to Keith May’s inspirational involvement with the under 13’s that I joined forces with the late Don Smith of Worthing Harriers to put on something similar for under 15’s”.
Janis Long of Eastbourne Rovers was having similar thoughts in the East of the county so that now we have both under 13 and under 15 finals over the first weekend in September.
It has been such a great pleasure to be part of the Sussex athletics scene over the past 35 years in a variety of roles and I value the many friendships made from clubs across the county”.