Running vet Chris Thompson wins Vikki Orvice Inspiration Award after historic Tokyo Olympic Games appearance aged 39
RUNNING veteran Chris Thompson has received the Vikki Orvice Inspiration Award following his surprise Tokyo Olympics bid.
A few weeks before his 40th birthday, the Cumbrian ran a personal best to win Britain’s Olympic marathon trials at Kew Gardens.
It meant he secured his place for the Tokyo Games 23 years after earning his first GB vest – he was the only Brit to finish the race in Sapporo – and came just four days after the birth of his first child.
The honour – a key part of the 2021 British Athletics Writers Association awards – was named after Vikki, the former athletics correspondent for SunSport, who died from cancer in February 2019 at the age of 56.
Thompson said: “I’m really humbled. This year has just been really special in so many ways for me and my family.
“I’ve been in this sport for 24 years and for everything to have happened. I thought I’d seen it all.
“To have qualified for the Olympics while knocking on the door of 40 – and to become a dad in the same week – I thought that I’d seen it all.
“It’s blown me away. The fact that people are showing their appreciation in this way means a hell of a lot.”
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Hodgkinson, 19, took the main crown after winning a brilliant 800m silver in Tokyo, which saw her clock 1min 55.88sec to improve on Kelly Holmes’s national record set seven years before she was born.
America-based Kerr, 24, smashed his personal best by more than two seconds to win Olympic 1500m bronze and move second on the national all-time list in the process with a time of 3min 29.05sec.
Sprinter Thomas Young and wheelchair racer Hannah Cockroft won the Para Athletes of the Year gongs.
The prestigious Ron Pickering Memorial Award for Services to Athletics was given to statistician Mark Butler, who has worked diligently in the sport for more than 35 years.