Bruce Tulloh, Barefoot Champion of the 1960s, Dies
By Athletics Weekly
European 5000m gold medallist, coach and author was an athletics pioneer in many ways
Bruce Tulloh, European 5000m champion in 1962, one of Britain’s best and most popular runners of the 1960s, trans-America record-breaker, and an ongoing influential figure in British athletics as a coach and writer, died on April 28, at his home in Marlborough, of cancer, aged 82.
Tulloh was the first non-African to compete without shoes in top-level international races, and he argued that the lack of any weight on his feet enabled him to accelerate more suddenly. That could give him a surprise winning break even on world-class fields like the 1962 European 5000m, when he got away with 700m to go.
Deceptively frail-looking, he was adored by the crowds and media, who loved to see the boyish-looking underdog with the high, protruding elbows skim away time after time from sturdy Russians and Poles in the international dual matches that in those days were the main competitions between Games.
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Bruce Tulloh, barefoot champion of the 1960s, dies
Athletics Weekly
Tulloh was the first non-African to compete without shoes in top-level international races, and he argued that the lack of any weight on his feet enabled him to accelerate more suddenly. That could give him a surprise winning break even on world-class fields like the 1962 European 5000m, when he got ...
How was your weekend running?
The Guardian (blog)
At the time he was famous for doing so barefoot - the first non-African runner to compete without shoes, saying - long before the barefoot trend became big business - that “on uneven grass surfaces the bare foot, with its thousands of nerve endings, adapts to changes far more quickly than the shod foot”.
Running pioneer and barefoot advocate, Bruce Tulloh, dies aged 82
Runner's World UK
Bruce Tulloh was a stalwart of the British running scene – variously a world-class athlete, coach, race organiser and author. He won his first national title in 1959, competed at the Rome Olympics in 1960 and became European 5000m champion in 1962, running barefoot. Retiring from the track was far ...
Running legend, Bruce Tulloh, dies aged 83 - The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald
