Lillian Board

Lillian Board0:00

This download is the only end.

Presenter0:02

Extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Dis

Lillian Board0:05

Disks.

Presenter0:05

Yeah.

Lillian Board0:05

The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:08

Where were you born, Lydia?

Lillian Board0:09

I was born in South Africa.

Presenter0:11

How old were you when you came to England?

Lillian Board0:12

Fifteen months old.

Presenter0:14

Well see we don't remember much about the union.

Lillian Board0:15

I don't remember South Africa at all, which is a great pity.

Presenter0:18

Where did you go to school?

Lillian Board0:20

Saint Paul's Primary School in Manchester, Withington.

Presenter0:23

Mm. And then you came down top.

Lillian Board0:25

We came to London when I was seven.

Lillian Board0:28

My father's a tunnel bricklayer, and most of the work at that time was in the south.

Presenter0:31

Yes. Was either of your parents an athlete?

Lillian Board0:34

No, not really. Um the whole family has always been very keen on f sport, especially my father. My brother and my twin sister, Irene, have always been very keen on swimming, but I had more ability for athletics, and so whichever sport I took to, my father would naturally take an interest in.

Presenter0:45

But I

Presenter0:51

Yes. When did you start taking interest in in athletics?

Lillian Board0:53

When I was twelve in fact, I was at um a senior school for girls at the time and the school in fact didn't participate in athletics, but we had a student teacher visit the school on teaching's training practice and she saw that I was reasonably good at gymnastics and most sports and asked me if I'd like to join the athletic club of which she was a member.

Presenter1:12

Of which

Lillian Board1:14

Well, this thrilled me, because I'd always intended that I should join an athletic club sometime or later.

Lillian Board1:20

It turned out to be earlier than anticipated.

Presenter1:23

And you used to train after school.

Lillian Board1:24

Always after school, yes. Twice a week and once on a Sunday morning.

Presenter1:28

Now, uh when you were a youngster, what events were you training for?

Lillian Board1:31

Well when I s joined the club it was primarily for sprinting. It was my ambition to be a hundred metre runner, a hundred yards as it was then. But I rather enjoyed playing in the sand, so I used to have dabble at high jump and long jump. I had a bash at the discus, but I was useless at that. I was useless at the javelin. I had no no coordination at all, so I soon dropped that. But I did keep going with the long jump.

Presenter1:45

Right.

Presenter1:55

What what was your first success?

Lillian Board1:56

What what was your third?

Lillian Board1:58

At the long jump, in fact, when I was 14, my first major success, I won the All-English Schools, and this delighted me. I'd been.

Presenter2:03

Uh

Lillian Board2:06

Sprinting and really just doing long jump as a B event, but it turned out that I was better at long jumping than I was at sprinting. Pure sprinting that is.

Presenter2:15

What was your first success outside school event?

Lillian Board2:17

Outside school would be in the British Championships in nineteen sixty six. By this time I'd moved up to the four hundred metres because I couldn't make the team as a sprinter the British team.

Presenter2:29

Yes.

Lillian Board2:30

And in fact, I'd been eliminated in the semifinal of the four hundred, but this particular year was the Empire Games in Jamaica, and because I happened to have the third fastest time for an English girl, it meant I was eligible to compete in the Empire Games, so really this was my first success.

Presenter2:45

It really

Presenter2:47

Yes, and you became at once an international

Lillian Board2:49

I mean international, yes.

Presenter2:50

Now your father was training you.

Lillian Board2:52

From the word go, yes, when I started running at the age of twelve.

Presenter2:53

Uh

Lillian Board2:56

Um my father decided he he liked to come along, learn about it. He he knew obviously what an international man should be doing, but he wasn't quite certain what a girl of twelve should be doing in times, that is, for her age.

Presenter3:07

Yeah.

Lillian Board3:08

So he he read practically every book available on athletics. He took um lessons, took exams, he's now a fully qualified coach.

Presenter3:17

Okay.

Lillian Board3:17

And if I may say so, I think an excellent coach.

Presenter3:20

But he certainly made a job out of you.

Lillian Board3:22

Thank you.

Presenter3:23

How many evenings a week? How many evenings a week do you train?

Lillian Board3:23

What a job.

Lillian Board3:27

Um, it varies actually. I usually set it or rather my father and I set a schedule together for seven nights a week in the winter, although certain things prevail and I can't always train the full seven days. I usually train though I should say about six times a week in the winter. This used to consist of three times a week weight training and three or four times a week running on the track or over cross country or sometimes on the roads.

Presenter3:42

Hmm.

Lillian Board3:51

But I have been suffering from a bad back over the last few months, so this year will be the first year in four that I won't be doing weight training at all. I shall be t sticking to running.

Presenter4:02

Now you were selected for the Commonwealth Games in 1966 in Jamaica. How did you do?

Lillian Board4:08

I came fifth in the final.

Presenter4:10

And the next year, sixty seven, you had a fine success in Los Angeles.

Lillian Board4:14

Yes, um that was my first international match of the year, and I went to Los Angeles to represent the Commonwealth in a match against America, and on paper I really didn't stand a chance at all, because I was competing

Lillian Board4:27

against the best three girls in the world, Judy Pollock, who was the world record holder at the time, heading the list. And I was terrified out of my mind. I was so nervous. I was so much slower than these girls. And I think looking back on it now, they had all the pressure on them. I wasn't given a chance. And probably because of this I I ran right through them and was able to win.

Presenter4:51

Yes. And that year you went to Russia for the first time.

Lillian Board4:54

I went to Russia for the first time in the Europa Cup. I also visited Montreal for a match against the Western Hemisphere at the time I was representing Europe. I visited several um, continental countries, communist countries, and I visited Cuba.

Presenter5:10

In fact, it was a successful year to the extent that you won the national championship and eight out of ten international races.

Lillian Board5:17

Yes, I did.

Presenter5:18

And overshadowing everything of course was the realization that the Olympics at Mexico City were coming up next year.

Lillian Board5:23

Very much so you can't do it.

Presenter5:24

Were you told very much in advance that you had been picked?

Lillian Board5:28

No, no, we weren't.

Lillian Board5:30

Um

Lillian Board5:31

The final selection was made on august fourth, nineteen sixty eight, and the first batch, so to speak, of athletes leaving for Mexico left on September the fifteenth. So there wasn't an awful lot of time for athletes to prepare.

Presenter5:41

See,

Lillian Board5:44

But I suppose some of us had an idea we would be going anyway.

Presenter5:48

Yes. Well, in June 1968, you'd moved up to the top of the world list, so that must have clinched it for you. What took you to the top of the list?

Lillian Board5:56

I was competing in Moscow at the time in a four hundred meters international.

Lillian Board6:01

And I happened to win in a time of fifty three point five, which wasn't particularly outstanding as the times go, but for the time of year, that is, it was very good well, reasonably good.

Presenter6:11

Well we

Presenter6:13

Mexico City, october, nineteen sixty eight. Was there any conflict? Your father was training you, and now of course the national coaches wanted to work on you. Did this prevent uh present any kind of problem?

Lillian Board6:25

No, not really. Um for the last couple of years there has been some conflict inasmuch as the press are always slating my father, always telling me I would do a lot better to get a national coach. But I'm quite happy with the results as they are at the moment.

Presenter6:40

I should think so.

Lillian Board6:41

Um when I went to Mexico, my father was there, in fact, but merely as a spectator, to watch the end product, so to speak. He'd coached me for so long, and he wanted to see how I would fare. But there was no question of anyone intercepting. Um

Lillian Board6:55

I was quite happy to be advised by the national coaches while I was in Mexico, and Daddy it um didn't interfere in the least. He had no reason to. The work had been done, it was just m a matter of carrying out a few more training sessions before the big day.

Presenter7:09

Yes. On form it was your raise.

Lillian Board7:12

So everybody kept telling me, unfortunately. I wasn't really aware of any pressure before the Olympics, except for the fact that I was there a month before the actual Olympic Games and I think nearly every day my picture appeared in one of the Mexican newspapers. I was constantly being interviewed. Who are your main rivals? Who do you think was going to give you the best race? This worried me a little bit because as I kept telling them it was an Olympics, it was anybody's race and I wasn't just being m modest, I was facing facts, but they wouldn't listen to me, they had to have their story. So consequently when the race was over and I had in fact won a silver, they they kept accentuating the negative rather than the positive. They kept on about the gold medal that I'd lost rather than the silver that I'd won, which I thought was rather unfair.

Presenter7:59

Hero.

Presenter8:01

He won the semi-final on a flooded track.

Lillian Board8:03

Yes.

Presenter8:04

You were second and the final did anything upset you? Was it the climate? The h

Lillian Board8:08

Nothing upset me. Nothing went wrong. If I could r um run that race again, I wouldn't change a thing. I would just hope that Colette Besson wouldn't come up on me.

Presenter8:09

That's it.

Presenter8:17

Carlotte Berson, um who was first, you've beaten her since.

Lillian Board8:21

I've beaten her twice since actually, yes, I beat her in Middlesbrough earlier than this year and I just managed by the skin of my teeth to beat her in Athens, so at the moment the score is 2-1 and I've got a horrible feeling that she's going to try and equal it before long.

Presenter8:31

Yeah.

Presenter8:35

Yeah.