An Amazing Kiwi

An Amazing Kiwi

In 1979, at the age of 56, Cliff Young competed in the Adidas Sun Superun 16 kilometers (9.9 mi) race which crossed the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne. He ran the race at a very respectable 64 minutes and was interviewed by the media.

Cliff then ran the Melbourne Marathon with a time of 3:21:41 in 1979. He would go on to compete in 1980, 1981, and 1982, setting a personal best of 3:02:53 in 1980, aged 58.

In late 1982, after training for months around the Otway Ranges, Young attempted to break New Zealander Siegfried “Ziggy” Bauer’s then-world record for 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of 11 days and 23 hours. The attempt took place in Colac‘s Memorial Square. Young had to abandon the world record attempt just after halfway at 805 kilometers (500 mi). Reflecting on the failed attempt, Young wrote that he and his support team were inexperienced and ill-prepared.

In 1983, now aged 61 years old, Young won the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, a distance of 875 kilometres (544 mi). The race was run between what was then Australia’s two largest Westfield shopping centers: Westfield Parramatta in Sydney and Westfield Doncaster in Melbourne. Young arrived to compete in overalls and work boots, without his dentures (later saying that they rattled when he ran). He ran at a slow and loping pace and trailed the pack by a large margin at the end of the first day. While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours, Young kept running. He ran continuously for five days, taking the lead during the first night and eventually winning by 10 hours. Before running the race, he had told the press that he had previously run for two to three days straight rounding up sheep in gumboots (rubber boots). He said afterwards that during the race he imagined he was running after sheep trying to outrun a storm. The Westfield run took him five days, fifteen hours, and four minutes, almost two days faster than the previous record for any run between Sydney and Melbourne, at an average speed of 6.5 kilometers per hour (4.0 mph). All six competitors who finished the race broke the old record. Upon being awarded the prize of A$10,000 (equivalent to $36,011 in 2022), Young said that he did not know there was a prize and that he felt bad accepting it, as each of the other five runners who finished had worked as hard as he did—so he split the money equally between them, keeping none. Despite attempting the event again in later years, Young was unable to repeat this performance or claim victory again.

Young became very popular after this “tortoise and hare” feat, so much so that in Colac, Victoria, the Cliff Young Australian Six-Day Race was established that same year. In 1984, he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia “for long-distance running”.

In 1997, at age 75, he attempted to beat Ron Grant‘s around-Australia record. He completed 6,520 kilometres of the 16,000-kilometre run, but had to pull out because his only crew member became ill

In 2000, Young achieved a world age record in a six-day race in Victoria.