This month marks 100 years since Johnny Miles won the Boston Marathon. Before that day, the 20-year-old had never competed in a race more than 10 miles long. Wearing sneakers that cost 98 cent, he certainly was not expected to trouble the front-runners – Clarence Demar, who had already won the race four times, and Albin Stenroos, who won the marathon in the 1924 Olympics. Yet the plucky grocery-delivery boy from Nova Scotia won the race in a time of 2:25:40.
He later told how, on the day before the race, he and his father got lost when they tried to walk the course. A burly Irish policeman directed them back on track, telling them to follow the crowd. When the race began the novice athlete did follow the crowd but, to everyone’s surprise, the crowd ended up following him when he picked up the pace near the finish line.
He returned to Boston in his trusty 98-cent sneakers the following year but his father tried to give him an advantage by shaving the soles of his shoes to make them lighter. This well-intentioned gesture put the kibosh on his chances, as his feet started to bleed a few miles into the run and he had to give up. But he came back again in 1929 to win the race.
Now if there was ever a better named winner of a marathon than Johnny Miles, I have yet to hear it. Isn’t he the perfect example of nominative determinism, the theory that suggests people are drawn to careers matching their names?
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If he had been Johnny Hurley, instead of Johnny Miles, he might never have taken up athletics. Perhaps he would have borrowed a sliotar from one of his many Irish immigrant neighbours in Nova Scotia, and the marathon-running world would have been all the poorer for it.
Athletics really does seem to attract people whose names suggest they are destined for great things. With a name like his, Usain Bolt was always going to become the fastest man in the world, but when it comes to hurdles, who better to win a European Championship gold medal than Marina Stepanova?
This year’s Boston Marathon will be held on April 20th and the 30,000-strong entry list adds credence to the nominative determinism theory. There’s a Brittany Speed, a Lukas Bolte, an Abigail Miles, an Erin Rush and a Seán Swift. All are clearly born to run.
However, I worry slightly for the man called Tripp and the woman with the surname Hurtt. May they both have safe and speedy races. Coincidentally, if you combine their names, you get Tripp Hurt, a US steeplechaser and middle distance runner whose record suggests he did not trip or get hurt very often.
As well as winning on the track, he came first in a competition run by Runners’ world magazine in 2014. It held a vote to determine the athlete with the best name in running and Mr Hurt coasted to victory, with US champion road racer Gretchen Speed taking second place.
You could say Tripp Hurt’s name is the opposite of nominative determinism. You could also say that about Frank Beard – the only member of the ZZ Top trio who didn’t sport a beard. That was until he fell victim to peer pressure and grew a short one in 2013.
There was no danger of his beard getting entangled in a musical instrument, unlike the long and luxuriant beards of bandmates Dusty Hill and Billy Gibbons. Try running a marathon with one of those beards hitting you in the eye as you reach the 17-mile marker. This probably explains the lack of beards among our elite athletes. Although every now and then a sportsman such as Gordon D’Arcy sprouts a boisterously bushy beard guaranteed to make all average men feel inadequate.
He might have been inspired by Kerry footballer Eoin “Bomber” Liston, who caused a spike in beardedness when he ran on to the Croke Park pitch in the 1978 All-Ireland final. He acquired the Bomber nickname for his resemblance to German soccer player Gerd “Der Bomber” Müller. It stuck so well that his friends didn’t think twice when they shouted the name. That was until a fateful flight from Cardiff to Cork in 2018.
He was part of a stag outing returning from Cheltenham and was sitting a few rows in front of a friend. Wanting to get his attention, the friend called out “Bomber” to him a few times. An alert cabin-crew member heard the word and immediately grew alarmed.
Happily for all, this was not a case of nominative determinism. A quick internet search proved to the cabin crew that he was a bomber in nickname only and the flight continued peacefully winging its way to Cork.
