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There’s barely an Australian alive who hasn’t heard of the ultra-runner Cliff Young. The man’s an inspiration to all of us, not just endurance athletes. To anyone who has ever faced an insurmountable challenge that nobody believes can be overcome, Cliff’s story offers hope.
On Wednesday, 27 April, 1983, Cliff Young turned up at the Westfield shopping mall in the western suburbs of Sydney, looking for the start line to a remarkable race. The route led to another Westfield shopping mall, 543.7 miles away in Melbourne.
The race was widely considered to be the toughest of its kind, and the assembled field included some of the best in the world, men in their prime who had trained for months to reach peak physical condition for the event.
Cliff stood out from the handful of runners who had gathered for the brutal race. He was sixty-one years old, wore overalls and work boots, and had removed his dentures because he didn’t like the way they rattled when he ran.
While most people assumed he was either a spectator or a maintenance guy who’d gotten slightly lost, Cliff collected his race number and joined the other runners.
“Mate,” said one of the journalists when he saw Cliff on the line, “d’you think you can finish the race?”
“Yes, I can,” said Cliff. “See, I grew up on a farm where we couldn’t afford horses or tractors, and the whole time I was growing up, whenever the storms would roll in, I’d have to go out and round up the sheep. We had two thousand sheep on two thousand acres. Sometimes I would have to run those sheep for two or three days. It took a long time, but I’d always catch them. I believe I can run this race.”
The race started, and Cliff was left behind. He didn’t even run right; he had this weird-looking shuffle where he barely lifted his feet from the ground. By the end of the first day, when all the runners decided to stop and get some sleep, Cliff was miles and miles behind them.
The pros knew how to pace themselves for the run, and they all worked the same plan of running for eighteen hours a day and sleeping for six. That way the fastest among them hoped to reach the end in about seven days.
Cliff was working with a different plan. When they resumed the race the next morning, the other runners were shocked to hear that Cliff was still in the race. He’d not slept and had shuffled his way right through the night.
He did the same thing the second night as well as the third. With each morning came more news of how Cliff had jogged through the night, breaking down the lead that the runners half his age tried to stretch out in the day.
Eventually Cliff overtook them, and after five days, fifteen hours, and four minutes, he crossed the finish line. He had broken the record by almost two full days, beating the five other runners who finished the race.
To Cliff’s surprise, he was handed a winner’s cheque for $10,000. He said he didn’t know that there was a prize and insisted he had not entered the race for the money. He refused to take a cent for himself and instead divided it equally among the other five finishers.
Cliff became nothing short of a legend. It was hard to know what footage of him people loved most: the shots of him shuffling along highways in slacks and a casual T-shirt or the images of him chasing sheep around the pasture, wearing gum boots and a look of pure determination.
I was a kid when the Aussie news networks covered Cliff’s story. He was a celebrity, a genuine one-of-a-kind who had done something amazing that made the whole nation take notice. It wasn’t until I became a runner myself that I appreciated how remarkable his achievement was. And it wasn’t until Gobi went missing and I found myself on a flight back to China that I returned to his story and drew inspiration from it.
The day after I posted the news that Gobi was missing, we were flooded with messages from people all over the world. Some were positive and full of sympathy, prayers, and good wishes. Other posts expressed fears that Gobi would eventually end up being eaten. It was the first time I’d ever thought about the possibility, but it didn’t strike me as very likely. Even though I’d spent only ten days in China, I had a feeling that the rumour of the Chinese as dog eaters was probably off the mark. Sure, I’d seen stray dogs around the place, but I’d seen the same in Morocco, India, and even Spain. Instead of being cruel, every Chinese person who’d taken an interest in Gobi had treated her with care and affection, nothing less.
While I appreciated people’s warm wishes and could handle their panic, there was a third type of message that I just didn’t know what to do with: How the hell did that happen?! Seriously????
I knew something like this would happen … What a horrible place for that dog to be lost too. I’m disgusted for how this was handled.
How on earth was the dog able to escape????
These “caregivers” had one job to keep this precious small dog safe and these [supposed] guardians failed her! … How do you lose a dog you were supposed to be watching until she could be ADOPTED!
I felt bad. In fact, I felt terrible. So many people had given so much money—about ￡20,000 by the time she went missing—and now Gobi was gone. I knew that in the eyes of the public I was fully responsible for Gobi. I accepted that and knew the blame stuck with me.
If I’d handled things differently, Gobi wouldn’t have gone missing. Yet what else could I have done? When I finished the race and left Gobi with Nurali, I assumed it would take only a few weeks before we’d be reunited in Britain so Gobi could begin the quarantine process. Had I known how hard it was going to be to get her across China and then out of the country, I would have hired a driver and taken Gobi back to Beijing myself. But all I knew, at the time I finished the race, was that Nurali—who seemed to me the very best person for the job—was happy to help. At the time it seemed enough.
I was tempted to reply to each message, but they were coming in even faster than they had after the Daily Mirror article had hit. Every few minutes there was a new comment, and I knew that it was best just to give people the space they needed to vent their anger. There was no point in getting drawn into any arguments.
Besides, there was another type of comment that started to get my attention.
I wonder if it’s a kidnap situation due to all the publicity surrounding her story.
Even though I can get annoyed with people when they mess up, I’m generally a very trusting person. I’d never thought of Gobi’s escape as anything other than an accident. The more I read of these messages, however, the more I started to wonder.