The Ghost Runner

As a feckless teenager in the early 1950s, John Tarrant had briefly put up his fists as a boxer. Five fights. Five beatings. Seventeen quid pocket money and out. 'You should run?, people said. And so John Tarrant ran - straight into the nightmare from which he would never escape. To the old school ties who presided over British athletics, Tarrant?s pitiable earnings in the ring stained him forever. He had taken money for sport and as a result he was banned from running at home and overseas. But Tarrant was a survivor. A grim childhood in a home had toughened his mind and brutal graft in quarries as an adult had hardened his physique. He was now a rebel with a cause . . . and a plan. On a warm summer?s day in 1956, a nervous stranger mingled among the star athletes at the start of the 1956 Liverpool marathon. He had no number on his vest and no one knew his name, but minutes later he was in the lead. From then on, Tarrant would 'ghost? races all over Britain. Stewards armed with his photograph would chase him, but there was now no catching the man the British tabloids tagged the 'Ghost Runner'. For the rest of his short life, Tarrant would fight to free himself of the ban imposed for those few teenage minutes in a boxing ring. It was a fight that took him to world records at 40 and 100 miles and which saw him run in America and South Africa, where he defied the authorities and ran as the only white in all-black races. But despite pouring thousands of miles and hundreds of letters into his campaign. There was no happy outcome, however, as Tarrant was diagnosed with stomach cancer and died in 1975 aged 42 with his international ban still in place. John Tarrant ran to the bitter end, and this is his remarkable story.