NewsColony

NewsColony Sunday was to have seen the 40th London Marathon but for Hugh Brasher it remains a symbol of unity Chris Brasher was one of the great Corinthians: four-minute mile pace-maker, Olympic champion, mountaineer, journalist, pipe smoker and all-round bon vivant. His great legacy was the London Marathon and, although coronavirus dictates it will not flow through the capital’s streets on Sunday, the spirit Brasher first imbued in the annual pageant will live on. That spirit was set out in an article he wrote in 1979 after running the New York Marathon as a journalistic exercise. His son Hugh, now race director in London, recalled this week that the idea of 26.2 miles on a city road had filled his father — a lover of nature — with sheer horror. Dick Beardsley (left) and Inge Simonsen cross the line together in the first London Marathon  As it turned out, the event stirred his soul. He reported in the Observer: ‘Last Sunday, in one of the most violent, trouble-strick...