Last weekend we were lucky enough to be visited by international athlete, Tom Bosworth (the new 'Bozzie' moniker was bestowed upon him by Gabby Logan of the BBC recently) fresh from his performance at the Athletics World Championships held in Beijing only a couple of weeks ago.
At 25 years of age, he is making great strides (if you'll pardon the pun) in his chosen event of race walking and apart from the Dehli Commonwealth Games in 2010, this was his second major championship, following the European in Zurich last year, so he was relatively pleased with his position of 24th 20k racewalker on the planet (8th European.)
He is currently holder of the British national 5k (3.1 miles in 19:00 minutes) & 10k (6.2 miles in 39:36 minutes) records that he completed in times that many decent club runners would be proud of and it is surely a matter of time before he eclipses Ian McCombie's 1988 20k standard.
Tom was joined on the Island by Welsh athlete, Bethan Davies and together they used the Welbeck facilities to chat to local walkers and officials on Friday evening before holding a training session on the Saturday and then racing in the Manx 20k Championships on Sunday.
Saturday's Training Session
They are both enthusiastic, polite, modest and refreshingly honest. Despite being the only member of the Great Britain and Northern Ireland team in China without lottery funding, Bozzie acknowledges that there is no point in whingeing about his lot and that he must continue improve his performances to smash through the barriers preventing financial recognition.
Bethan Davies, the women's 20k winner by a huge margin. 98 minutes was not quite as fast as she was looking for but she has recently moved house and also works full time. She recently set the British track 20k record.
He is very much a late developer, as illustrated by Olympic Chief Judge, Manxman, Steve Taylor who read out a result from the u15s when neither Bosworth's time nor his position in the race gave the slightest indication of what was and what hopefully will be to come (he has already qualified for the Rio Olympics 2016.) It is a reminder to us all to keep trying and working at achieving our dreams because winners are not necessarily the ones who initially seem most talented.
Tom Tom Drums. Tom Bosworth helping local rising star Tom Partington to a massive personal best in Sunday's 5k race
Having completed his competition early, Eurosport took the opportunity to invite him to be their expert summariser both during the Women's 20k and the Men's 50k and he made a decent fist of his second stint on the microphone, having made his debut in Switzerland in 2014, though personally, I'm hoping it will be a long time before he will consider making that career progression.
Tom racing towards 20k(12.4miles) victory, barely breaking sweat in 94 minutes, a time that most athletes would be very proud of but 12 minutes down on his best mark.
The great hope is that he will also help to inspire the next generation and there is some evidence that despite a long fallow period in British walking, that there is a healthy future for our event in these Isles.
Of course like most sports people, Tom gratefully appreciates any sponsorship that might come his way. One of the avenues he would like to explore is training at altitude which can be very expensive on his budget, so if you feel you would like to contribute you might like to look at his website:
http://www.tombosworth.com/
With thanks to Steve Partington, Robert Currey & Richard Wild for the photographs
