Being on the medal podium at a slightly higher elevation due to my silver didn't provide much consolation - particularly as this defeat was particularly galling. I was pleased my tactics, execution and levels of effort but, like a failed prospector at Sutter's Mill, all I found was silver. I vowed to keep digging.....
The medal presenter was the Vice President of the European Vets (if I remember correctly) and regaled me with his version of "congratulations". This was cringeworthy and I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd just been presented with a medal by a paedo for the rest of the day.
Due to a dearth of young old folk our 4 * 100m and 4 * 400m relay teams were identical. It also meant that I was running the 4 * 100m for the first time since 1993. After some semi-vigorous early morning practice we took to the track with the feeling that we'd at least get the baton round and in the process do a much better job than the professional athletes from the USA have managed in recent years. As the third leg runner I took the baton very smoothly but passing it on to our 4th runner was a bit of an abortion with my hamstring complaning loudly - which was good enough for a silver medal.
By this time I was tantalisingly close to the full medal collection and, on paper, we had the best squad for the 4 * 400m. The race went to plan as we remorsely disposed of the Italians and Germans for a gold medal. The British over 35 record was missed by 0.17 of a second which we blamed on the soft track - with some justification indicentally.
(One caveat to the relay medals in the interests of full disclosure is that it would have been tough not to at least medal due to the paucity of entries. Not for the first time the oft-used phrase "you've got to be in it to win it" was wheeled out in it's, by now, fully rusted barrow).
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