My greatest race: David Sharpe

British 800m runner looks back on his victory at the World Junior Championships in Athens in 1986 in 1:48.32

Steve Cram ran for our club, Jarrow & Hebburn, and he’d won gold at the first world senior championships in 1983 but I wasn’t really inspired by that – or anyone, for that matter. I didn’t really get into athletics through my own choice. I just had a hell of a lot of natural ability.

I was running well through secondary school, even winning the 200m, 400m, 800m, long jump, high jump and triple jump. I remember sports day, and going up to get six or seven gold medals off that ability. I only joined the athletics club because I was at my local youth club one night and they were taking names to run a fun run in South Shields on the coming Sunday morning.

It’s probably one of the best 10ks I’ve ever run. I never liked running any longer distances but I won it in about 33 minutes, which was incredible for that age. After that there was a guy who said to me: “You really, really need to join an athletics club if you’re running that type of time off no training.”

For a lot of athletes, they took up athletics when they were 11 or 12 and they wanted to achieve something. If you asked Steve Cram at that age, I’m sure he’d have said: “I want to win Olympic gold. I want to break world records.” I was quite the opposite, but things progressed really, really quickly.

The thing is I didn’t really want it. I had other things on my mind. I had to be persuaded to train. I was into motorbikes. I used to go up to Westgate Road in Newcastle and watch people go mad on their bikes every Saturday without fail. But, lo and behold, when I took up athletics nearly all the races were on Saturdays so I remember arguing with my dad when he said: “Are you going to go and run this race?” and I was determined to skip it to see the motorbikes.

Once I started running well and winning races, things changed. But it’s no secret that, at that time, I was racing go-karts and I wanted to be a rally driver. I just wasn’t the same type as other athletes.

I did enjoy it, I thrived on the success and I was proud of certain things I’d done. But, in all honesty, I found training a chore – especially getting up on a Sunday morning and going for 10-mile runs, which I did not enjoy one little bit. Even though I was quite successful on the track, I hated running cross-countries, but my coach Jimmy Hedley would obviously get us to do it and he’d…