Charlie Spedding

Charlie Spedding (actually Charles Spedding; born May 19, 1952 in Bishop Auckland, County Durham ) is an English former long-distance runner and Olympic third parties.

In 1983 he was English champion in the 10,000 - meter race in his fastest time of 28:08,12 min.

Beginning of 1984 he ran in the Houston Marathon for the first time in the competition the 42.195 km, to find out if he should take over this distance or the 10,000 m at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. He won this race by a hair in front of the same time evaluated Massimo Magnani.

The decision to switch to the long Olympic distance, he should not regret it because a few months later he won the London Marathon and the Olympic marathon, he sat down at km 35 with the eventual winner Carlos Lopes (POR ) and John Treacy ( IRL) from the rest of the field from. While Lopez was able to solve some kilometers downstream of them, the race was for the silver medal to the last exciting - with just two seconds ahead pointed Treacy Spedding to third place.

A year later he was the London Marathon second behind Steve Jones and presented it to 2:08:33 h an English record, which until today (March 2008) stock. In 1986, he was third at the Chicago Marathon, and the marathon of the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, he was sixth.

Then he went again and again to create injury problems, he graduated in 1990 from his sporting career.

In the following years he worked as a pharmacist.

During his athletic career, he was involved in the Campaign for Real Ale and justified this by saying that if he could not even drink a lot of beer, it should be the best possible at least.