Remembering Don Turner (1937-2025)
William Donald “Don” Turner 1937-2025: Treasurer of the Association 2005-2023, President 2015-2016, Life Member.
Many of the runners in South of the Thames Cross Country Association events will have been aware of Don, even if they did not know his name. Invariably he stood at the end of the finish funnel calling out times to his recorder or handing out place discs to exhausted runners as they exited the finish area. They may not have known that for very many years he was the person who received the race entries, produced the programmes, persuaded other officials to attend; they may not have known that it was he who spent the evening after the race producing the official results. Don was integral to the smooth functioning of the Association: Treasurer for nearly two decades, a Past President and Life Member. But there was far more to this man who was never happier than when working to put on excellent events for athletes.
In fact, Don loved all sport. First of all, he was an Epsom man, so he loved the horses. One could guarantee that a walk up to the Downs before the Oaks or the Derby, would result in an encounter with Don. He would not be in the fancy enclosures but leaning on the rail by the starting stalls. The Downs featured greatly in his life: not only a place where he followed the horses, but the starting point of countless cross-country races, especially for his beloved Epsom & Ewell Harriers. The Downs were also a regular starting point for his Monday walking group. He was a great man for “doing the right thing,” and would spend time picking up litter around his home in Stoneleigh, and up on the Downs again the Sunday after the Derby to help with the massive clear up.
He was keen on football, claiming to be a Chelsea fan, although probably attending the Den with John Gebbels more often than he went to Stamford Bridge. When women's professional football began to take off, he became a strong supporter of the Arsenal Team. On Sundays he would travel all the way to Barnet to watch them play.
But of course, he was first and foremost an athletics man and his scrap book and race diary was fascinating. In the 1960's one could not run a marathon until the age of 21 years was reached. Don, who already knew that his strength would be in runs far beyond 26.2 miles, ran his first marathon about 2 weeks after his 21st birthday, and within a month or so he was taking part in the SLH 30. Throughout his career he ran 65 marathons but raced a further 165 races longer than that classic distance.
In 1962 the British Road Runners Club paid for four runners, including two from Epsom & Ewell Harriers and one from Belgrave Harriers, to make the trip to South Africa to race the 54 miles Durban to Pietermaritzburg Comrades Marathon – twice the distance of a normal marathon, and climbing more than 1,200 metres along the way. Don was described as "possibly the most dependable ultra distance runner of the day". Very few could resist the nagging persistence of his high-quality running.
The Surrey trio all finished in the first four. Don's close friend John Smith was in 1st place, Don 3rd and Ron Linstead, the Belgrave athlete, was 4th. They won the team prize hands down. His two Surrey team mates that day were clocking 150 miles per week in training, but Turner went up to 180 and had even surpassed 200 miles. 180 miles is pretty much a marathon every day, seven days a week.
Don had multiple wins on the Isle of Man TT course, the Liverpool to Blackpool Race, and similar. Maybe there was a little sadness that he never quite managed to win his local classic race from London to Brighton where he had two second places and two third places.
A major career highlight was not on the road but on the cinders at Stompond Lane, Walton on Thames, where he set a World Record for a 6-hour race running 52 miles and 110 yards. This was two and a half miles further than the previous best. It had rained constantly on the morning of that event, and it was more like a cross-country race than a track race.
And the shoes they ran in on those days! Today we see people running 5k park runs in Nike shoes with a 40mm sole. Don swore by his Dunlop Blue Flash tennis shoes, the soles of which were 5mm thick. He liked to tell the story of how he heard that Dunlop was about to discontinue them. He contacted the wholesaler and bought every pair in his size that was in stock.
Don retired from running relatively early and, if it was possible, devoted even more time to his athletics. He quickly rose through the ranks as a timekeeper and that remained his speciality for the rest of his life. Many of our current timekeepers talk of the debt they owe to Don for his mentoring and guidance. And he was such a mild and gentle man that he gave advice in the most calm and patient way. Very, very occasionally Don would get annoyed by someone or something, but you had to know him well and listen carefully to subtle changes of tone before you would recognise any sign of annoyance. The summer of 2024 turned out to be his last season of officiating. He was obviously becoming a bit frail and a bit forgetful, but everyone acknowledged that his timekeeping was still spot on.
In the 1970s and ‘80s he moved on from the stopwatch to master photo finish skills. Today this involves instant digital images on laptops. In his last few years, Don began to remind everyone that, in his day, it involved old fashioned photographic film and splashing about slightly hazardous chemicals before you could examine the image. He was one of the early experts in the technology and was heavily involved in the heyday of Crystal Palace. In 1991 he was invited by Seiko to work for them at the Barcelona Olympics test event.
In 1980, Chris Brasher invited him to travel to New York to look at the marathon ahead of the inaugural London event. And when it came to the London race we assumed that Don would lead the timekeeping but if you drew the story out of him, he was in fact put in charge of the start. He later admitted that he would like to have continued to help organise the Marathon, but he was still working and could not afford the time off. The fact remains, however, that he had been one of the few who gave birth to that great event.
Over the years Don was President and/or Treasurer and/or Secretary and/or any other job that needed to be done for his club, the Surrey County Athletic Association, the South of England Athletic Association, the South of the Thames Cross Country Association, and many more. No job was too mundane for Don. He would happily spend hours stuffing bib numbers into envelopes before championship competitions. He contributed to Athletics Weekly and Athletics Today magazines. The latter was published locally in Kingston and every week he
worked through Sunday evening into the early hours of Monday morning to get the weekend's results ready for publication.
If he wasn't officiating or administering, then he would be supporting athletics. He really enjoyed travelling the World with like-minded friends to spectate at international competitions.
What many found most endearing about Don was that he would willingly help at any athletics event: elite international competition or grass roots, it made no difference. A classic example was in May 2023. On Saturday he was chief timekeeper at the prestigious Night of 10,000 PBs at the Highgate track. This goes on until late in the evening and it would have been very close to midnight before Don, then in his mid-80s, got home to his bed. But soon after 9 am the next morning he wandered into his local athletics arena, at Ewell, ahead of a grass roots league meeting for boys. As chief timekeeper he didn't really need to be there until the first race at 12.30 pm but he said, "I thought I'd come early to help get things ready".
Don was a great man of Athletics in the south of England and beyond, one of the very few to receive an obituary on the England Athletics website. He was an active member of Epsom & Ewell Harriers for 70 years. We were privileged to know him, to work alongside him, and to learn from him. Don did things to a standard of excellence that we all felt compelled to try to live up to. Most of all we were privileged to call him our friend. We will miss him.
Adapted from the tribute written and read at Don’s funeral by David Clarke CBE, Epsom & Ewell Harriers.