From disqualified at 15 to world champion at 70

“He said: ‘Can you come and warm up? We need you for the 100 metres relay!’ One of the sprinters had tweaked something an hour before the race and couldn't run. It was like a comic book, one minute I’m chomping my sandwich, the next you’re on the track with all these people clapping and waving.”

She’d never run a Masters relay before, but 70 year old Dot likes a challenge. So despite competing in her own road race the night before, she joined the world’s best 70-75 year old female sprinters at the World Masters Championships in Tampere, Finland this month, and helped her grateful team to a silver medal.

“I’m not exactly a sprinter,” she laughed, back at home in Bents Green, “but I have got a medal.”

Dot’s World Champion story began fourteen years ago in a local school playground (where she’s been a visitor over the years collecting combinations of her seven grandchildren after retiring from her PE teacher job). She began chatting to women from the Smiley Paces running club who encouraged her to go for a jog in the Porter Valley.

It was a big step, because as a teenager in Birmingham she’d vowed never to run again after being publicly disqualified for being ‘paced’ at a school cross country race.

“My friend had dropped out, and then found me and jogged back to the finish with me. I had no idea what pacing was, and none of the local athletics officials told me, they just said ‘you’re disqualified’, and it was even in the local paper. None of those men in blazers and cravats and silly hats said: ‘Actually, you’re a decent runner why don’t you come to the Harriers and we’ll give you a try out?’ I’d have jumped at the chance, but as it was, I stopped.”

But she found she enjoyed running with her new friends (despite being sick in the woods after trying too hard). She ran a 5K Race for Life, ran a ‘good for age’ time at the London Marathon, ran to and from her treatment at Weston Park Hospital to help recover from breast cancer eight years ago, then started bringing in the Masters (athletes aged 35+) medals for England and Great Britain.

Earlier this year she ran an ‘age graded score’ of over 100% for a 22:08 time at Endcliffe parkrun, meaning that if the run had been an officially marked and timed race, rather than a social run, she could have celebrated beating the world 5K record for 70 year old women - by 6 seconds.

Instead she carried on her training for the World Masters this month, with the 10K road race in mind. She has a careful schedule, like any other athlete, set out by her trainer John Rothwell from the Steel City Striders, and she can often be seen hurtling up and down city centre green spaces with young athletes in their 20s and 30s.

She’d already won a GB team gold in the World Masters W70 Cross Country event when she set out into the July heat on the 10K road race, and soon found herself ahead of the other W70 runners on the heels of her main rival, Ireland’s Eileen Kenny.

“This was everything I’d trained for since before Covid,” said Dot. "I knew she had a blitz finish, so at 5K I said ‘I have to lose this woman, if not I’m a silver medallist’. And off I went.”

Recovering from a life threatening illness changes your mind about things, she believes, and as she ran through ‘unbelievable pain’ to stay ahead, Dot thought about the shy 15 year old now not afraid to take on the best in the world.

She won, by 7 seconds, and became the 10K W70 World Champion.

“And at that point all the pain just goes away,” she said.