RUNNER'S WORLD www.runningtimes.com London's Olympics: 1908 and 1948 The stories of the first two London Olympiads as we anticipate the third By Roger Robinson Published May 8,2012 1948 SPORT AMONG THE RUINS AND NEW HORIZONS Nobody had any money, and not much to eat, but the games were very exciting for London, my old running friend Gez Mould remembers. They were held during the school holidays, and a lot of athletes were accommodated at my school, including the Greek team, so we used to hang around the field to get their autographs. Our area was full of bomb sites, where buildings had been destroyed, the whole country was wrecked and trying to recover, and the games gave people some hope. Mould was 14 when the Olympics came to London again in 1948. He lived only four miles from the Empire Stadium, Wembley, where the greyhound circuit around the soccer field had been hastily converted into a running track made of crushed cinders from British household fireplaces. Road access to the stadium was built with wheelbarrows and shovels by German prisoners of war. My dad was a coal delivery man. We couldn't afford to go to the games, even though they were supposed to be cheap, Mould recalls. I was at Greenford County Grammar School, and it had a basic gym and a grass track for the athletes to train on. The slope on the field helped them practice finishing fast! The school had a kitchen and primitive showers. They moved bunk beds into the classrooms for the athletes. They were all men the women's teams were somewhere a long way away. The beds came from air raid shelters down in the underground stations during the war—the platforms used to be lined with beds. They used old army lorries to ferry the athletes to Wembley. Some went on the bus. My father got army trucks cheap after that, so sold his horse and coal wagon. I had just started cross country and was top three out of a hundred boys, so I was getting interested in running, Mould tells me. In our road, there was one lady who had a 9-inch black and white TV, the first in our neighborhood, and she got all the children into her house to watch the games. So I saw [Emil] Zatopek, and Harrison Dillard win the 100 and Mel Whitfield against Arthur Wint in the 800. It was exciting after all the blackouts and bombings. Now 77, Mould is retired from being CEO of Britain's Furniture Industry Association and has a 2:45 marathon among his souvenirs. Living happily with his German wife in a historic village, Mould enjoys the world that World War II and the 1948 Olympic Games made possible. First, however, the world and the games had to survive that time of dour austerity. Food was rationed to 2,600 calories a day (one egg a week), which was increased for the selected British team a few days before the games to a special allowance of 3,900 calories the dock-worker's ration. Visiting teams brought donations Denmark brought eggs, China oiled bamboo shoots and New Zealand condensed milk and mutton fat. America headed that list with 15,000 bars of chocolate, something no British kid of Mould's age had tasted for eight years.