Twenty-five years ago Steve Jones set a British marathon best time which still stands today. PHIL BLANCHE speaks to the Welsh athletics legend and finds him saddened by that fact

IT was an era when athletics was big news. The sport played to sell-out stadiums and superstars like Seb Coe, Steve Cram and Carl Lewis were household names.

Even though East German laboratories had been producing track and field champions at a remarkable rate, athletics was still largely untainted by the dreaded D-word.

Drugs would poison the sport once and for all when Ben Johnson won and was then stripped of 100 metres gold at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

But the mid-1980s was a golden time for athletics and Wales had its own champion – on the road if not on the track – to glorify in.

Steve Jones rose from humble Ebbw Vale roots to become the first Welsh athlete to appear on the cover of the prestigious magazine Running Times.