With his weekly mileage quickly climbing, he'd set his sights on the Olympics - but first he needed to join a club. Even on honeymoon after his marriage to Edith Light in 1953, Tarrant took along his training gear.
GHOSTRUNNER PLOT MANUAL
Various manual labour jobs came and went, usually discarded in search of more time to run.
GHOSTRUNNER PLOT FULL
Full of heart but lacking much prowess, he quit the sport in 1951, blissfully unaware how damaging his inglorious stint as a professional boxer would turn out to be. He competed a further seven times over two years, earning himself a total of £17 - worth about £400 today. In 1949, aged 17, Tarrant took up boxing and participated in Buxton's inaugural fight night. "After that kind of childhood, of course, you're going to be angry and rebellious." "He used running as his psychological help," says Nicola Tyler, who is chair of the Ghost Runners running club in Hereford and was trained by Tarrant's brother Vic for many years. Soon he was known for a capacity to push himself further than most would even consider attempting. In this beautiful and savagely hilly landscape, the young Tarrant took to running with a stubborn zealousness that quickly consumed him. Recently remarried and with a new-born baby, he moved the family to the Derbyshire town of Buxton, on the edge of the Peak District. It wasn't until August 1947 that their father collected them. Two years later, their mother Edna died from tuberculosis. There they would remain for the next seven years.Ī stark setting at the best of times, life at Lamorbey was intensified by the terror of the Blitz.
However, in 1940, with their mother's health failing and their father called up to man London's anti-aircraft batteries, the brothers were sent to Lamorbey Children's Home in Kent. His brother Vic arrived in 1935 and, for a time, life progressed as childhood should. They called him the Ghost Runner.īorn in London in 1932 to parents John and Edna, Tarrant lived his early years in poverty but they were loving nonetheless. He was a dogged and brilliant competitor. One of Britain's finest long-distance athletes of the late 1950s and 1960s, he ran multiple world records but was denied his full share of glory by the stubborn authorities who banned him from racing. John Tarrant's sporting career fused triumph and tragedy. The spectators thundered their approval, and the stewards flailed as he skipped around them to join the runners disappearing down the road.
Seconds later, another sound ripped through the air.Ī spectator huddled beneath a long coat and a large hat had thrown his disguise clear, revealing his racing attire as he jumped, numberless, into the race.
GHOSTRUNNER PLOT CRACK
The local mayor raised his arm to the clouds and with the crack of his starting pistol, the race was under way. Runners now pressed forward as the start time neared. To almost everybody else, he was a downtrodden champion battling injustice. To the officials he was a gatecrasher, a scoundrel who must be prevented from racing.
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