Gumboot legend dies: [3 All-round Metro Edition 1]
Stapleton, John. The Australian; Canberra, A.C.T. [Canberra, A.C.T] 03 Nov 2003: 11.
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Abstract
On ABC News last night, Sid Young recalled his older brother’s dedication to training along the steep gravel roads around his farm. “I used to, at odd times, take him down a bottle of Milo and you couldn’t talk him into giving it up and having a ride back,” he said. Young will be cremated in Brisbane and a memorial service will be held in his home town of Colac in western Victoria.
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ULTRA-MARATHON legend Cliff Young died last night in Brisbane after a long illness.
Young, 81, was a potato farmer from Victoria who became a national celebrity in 1983 after winning the inaugural Sydney-to- Melbourne 800km ultramarathon at the age of 61.
He was a virtual hermit before he won the ultramarathon. He was given $10,000 in prize money, congratulated by the then prime minister Bob Hawke, and became an instant celebrity. He was regarded as Australia’s most unlikely folk hero since Ned Kelly.
Young has been living in the Queensland capital with his one- time support crew, Helen and John Powers, for the past four years. One of his close friends, Drew Kettle, once summed him up in a poem that read in part: “He loved the land and worked the farm/ and needed not a dog or horse/ for he could outrun the wildest cow/ In his old gumboots of course.”
On ABC News last night, Sid Young recalled his older brother’s dedication to training along the steep gravel roads around his farm. “I used to, at odd times, take him down a bottle of Milo and you couldn’t talk him into giving it up and having a ride back,” he said. Young will be cremated in Brisbane and a memorial service will be held in his home town of Colac in western Victoria.