Albert Ernest Clifford Young
OAM (8 February 1922
2 November 2003
) was an Australian potato farmer
and
athlete from
Beech Forest, Victoria. He was best known for his unexpected win of the inaugural
Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon in 1983 at 61 years of age.
Early life
Born the eldest son and the third of seven children of Mary and Albert Ernest Young on 8 February 1922, Albert Ernest Clifford Young grew up on a
farm
A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used ...
in Beech Forest in southwestern Victoria.
The family farm was approximately with approximately 2,000
sheep
Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated ...
.
As a child, Young was forced to round up the stock on foot, as the family were very poor during the
depression and could not afford
horses.
Running and ultramarathons
In 1979, at the age of 56, he competed in the Adidas Sun Superun race which crossed the
West Gate Bridge
The West Gate Bridge is a steel, box girder, cable-stayed bridge in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, spanning the Yarra River just north of its mouth into Port Phillip. It carries the West Gate Freeway and is a vital link between the inner ...
in
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
. He ran the race at a very respectable 64 minutes and was interviewed by the media.
Cliff then ran the
Melbourne Marathon
The Melbourne Marathon has been held annually since 1978. The 42.195 km run over the traditional marathon distance is the main race within the annual Melbourne Marathon Festival. The race celebrated its 30th birthday in 2007 with a new cour ...
with a time of 3:21:41 in 1979. He would go on to compete in 1980, 1981, and 1982, setting a personal best of 3:02:53 in 1980, aged 58.
In late 1982, after training for months around the
Otway Ranges
The Great Otway National Park is a national park located in the Barwon South West region of Victoria, Australia. The national park is situated approximately southwest of Melbourne, in the Otway Ranges, a low coastal mountain range. It conta ...
, Young attempted to break New Zealander Siegfried "Ziggy" Bauer's then world record for of 11 days and 23 hours. The attempt took place in
Colac's Memorial Square. Young had to abandon the world record attempt just after halfway at . Reflecting on the failed attempt, Young wrote that he and his support team were inexperienced and ill-prepared.
In 1983, now aged 61 years old, Young won the inaugural
Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, a distance of . The race was run between what were then Australia's two largest Westfield shopping centres:
Westfield Parramatta
Westfield Parramatta is a large shopping centre in the suburb of Parramatta in Greater Western Sydney.
Transport
The North Shore & Western, Inner West & Leppington and Cumberland Line offer frequent services to Westfield Parramatta.
Westfi ...
in Sydney and
Westfield Doncaster
Westfield Doncaster (formerly Doncaster Shoppingtown) is a shopping centre 50% owned by Scentre Group and 25% owned by ISPT and 25% owned by Asia Property Fund (as of May 2015) located in Doncaster, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. ...
in Melbourne.
Young arrived to compete in overalls and work boots, without his dentures (later saying that they rattled when he ran). He ran at a slow and loping pace and trailed the pack by a large margin at the end of the first day. While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours, Young kept running. He ran continuously for five days, taking the lead during the first night and eventually winning by 10 hours. Before running the race, he had told the press that he had previously run for two to three days straight rounding up sheep in
gumboot
The Wellington boot was originally a type of leather boot adapted from Hessian boots, a style of military riding boot. They were worn and popularised by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. The "Wellington" boot became a staple of p ...
s. He said afterwards that during the race he imagined he was running after sheep trying to outrun a storm. The Westfield run took him five days, fifteen hours and four minutes,
almost two days faster than the previous record for any run between Sydney and Melbourne, at an average speed of . All six competitors who finished the race broke the old record. Upon being awarded the prize of , Young said that he did not know there was a prize and that he felt bad accepting it, as each of the other five runners who finished had worked as hard as he did—so he split the money equally between them, keeping none. Despite attempting the event again in later years, Young was unable to repeat this performance or claim victory again.
Young became very popular after this "
tortoise and hare" feat, so much so that in
Colac, Victoria
Colac is a small city in the Western District of Victoria, Australia, approximately 150 kilometres south-west of Melbourne on the southern shore of Lake Colac.
History
For thousands of years clans of the Gulidjan people occupied the region o ...
, the
Cliff Young Australian Six-Day Race was established that same year. In 1984, he was awarded the
Medal of the Order of Australia
The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Gove ...
"for long distance running".
In 1997, at age 75,
he made an attempt to beat
Ron Grant's around-Australia record. He completed 6,520 kilometres of the 16,000-kilometre run, but had to pull out because his only crew member became ill.
In 2000, Young achieved a world age record in a six-day race in Victoria.
Personal life
![Beech Forest Cliff Young Memorial Gumboot Plaque](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Beech_Forest_Cliff_Young_Memorial_Gumboot_Plaque.JPG)
Young was a vegetarian from 1973 until his death. He lived at the family home with his mother and brother Sid. Cliff had never married, but after the 1983 race, at 62 years of age, he married 23-year-old Mary Howell. The race sponsor,
Westfield, hosted the wedding for the entertainment of shoppers.
Young and Howell divorced five years later.
Renowned for his ungainly running style, Young ran more than 20,000 kilometres during his competitive career.
After five years of illness and several strokes, he died of cancer at the age of 81 on 2 November 2003 at his home in Queensland.
A memorial in the shape of a gumboot in Beech Forest is dedicated to Young and the Cliff Young Drive and Cliff Young Park there are named after him.
"Young Shuffle"
The "Young Shuffle" has been adopted by some ultramarathon runners because it expends less energy.
At least three winners of the Sydney-to-Melbourne race were known to use the "Young Shuffle" to win the race. In 2010, comedian
Hannah Gadsby
Hannah Gadsby (born 1978) is an Australian comedian, writer, and actress. She began her career in Australia after winning the national final of the Raw Comedy competition for new comedians in 2006. In 2018, her show '' Nanette'' on Netflix wo ...
named her
Sydney Comedy Festival show "The Cliff Young Shuffle" in tribute.
''Cliffy'' telemovie
In May 2013,
ABC1
ABC TV, formerly known as ABC1, is an Australian national public television network. It is owned and operated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and is the flagship ABC Television network. The headquarters of the ABC TV channel an ...
broadcast ''Cliffy'', a
telemovie
A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for ...
about Young's victorious 1983 run. The telemovie starred
Kevin Harrington as Young, with his race support team played by
Roy Billing
Roy Harwood Billing (born 1947) is a New Zealand television actor, now based on Waiheke Island, New Zealand. He was brought up in Ruawai, Northland, New Zealand. Billing spent almost three decades living and working in Australia. He became w ...
as his coach Wally,
Anne Tenney
Anne Tenney (born 1954) is an Australian film, television and theatre actress, perhaps best known for her role as Melissa "Molly" Jones in the television drama '' A Country Practice'', Liz Taylor in ''Always Greener'' and Sal Kerrigan opposite M ...
as his sister Eunice, and Joshua Hine as Paul.
Krew Boylan
Krew Boylan (born 1982 or 1983) is an Australian actress. Boylan has appeared in different television programmes in her career, while she has appeared in many theatre productions. After initially filming only guest roles in ongoing series, Boyl ...
featured as Mary Howell. Young's mother was played by
Joan Sydney
Joan Sydney King (5 September 1936 – 28 December 2022) was an English-born Australian actress, primarily known for her television roles in soap operas and serials but who also appeared in theatre.
Sydney started her career in local theatre b ...
.
Young appeared briefly as himself in an episode (No. 479) of the television drama ''
Prisoner: Cell Block H''.
References
External links
*
Cliff Young Rest in Peace
{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, Cliff
1922 births
2003 deaths
Australian ultramarathon runners
Australian farmers
Deaths from cancer in Queensland
Otway Ranges
People from Victoria (Australia)
Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia
Australian male long-distance runners
Male ultramarathon runners