Allen James knows as well as any outstanding athlete that the right advice and encouragement in childhood can have a significant impact on a career.
James, 45, a two-time Olympian in the race walk competition — a four-time U.S. national champion (20K walk) — was obviously lucky to grow up in a Seattle home where a distant runner and coach also lived with the family.
The story goes that coach Pat Tyson quickly realized that James had natural talent so he urged him to enter running competitions as early as fourth grade. “He rented a room from us and lived there almost seven years,” James recalled.
There were other childhood influences, too.
An Olympic 20K walk champ stayed at the James’ home with the Mexican race walk team in the 1970s, and Arthur Lydiard, a coaching legend, was a guest for Thanksgiving one year.
Three years after his grade school experience, James decided to take up race walking. He never looked back.
By the 1990s, he was considered America’s dominant race walker. The same year he went into semi-retirement, he won the U.S. National Championship (Indoors), just a year after being ranked No. 1 in the 50K class.
Aside from events across this country, in the mid-1990s, he set four U.S. records while competing in the Goodwill Games at St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Pan-Am Walk Cup in Atlanta.
Through the years he has won more than a dozen major race walk events and honors including being inducted into the Western Washington University Hall of Fame and named to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics.
While some people in the track and field competitions may think James is retired now, that’s not the case.
Last week he finished in third place in the U.S. National 50K Race Walk Championships in Surprise, Ariz., near Phoenix. He was awarded $2,000.
James finished in 4 hours, 24 minutes. The winning time was 4 hours, 23 minutes, 2 seconds.
A former marketing and special events director with the regional state parks commission, James works for Toth’s Sports, a specialty sporting goods firm based in Victor. He and his wife, Laura, have three children, Teisha, Denae and Axel, and live in Sanborn.
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MONEY TALK: Mayor Paul Dyster had a hard time keeping a straight face one recent day in Washington, D.C., as he chatted with other delegates during a break at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He tells the story on himself.
A mayor from a city with probably four times the population of Niagara Falls was recounting how he had heard a lot about the federal stimulus funds that the Obama administration was making available to communities across the country. But he was still waiting to see any of it come his way.
Dyster didn’t want to rub it in but, at last count, this city has received some $5 million in those funds with much of that earmarked for street repairs.
•••
REFORM CANDIDATE?: Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, forced to step down last year when he became involved in a prostitution scandal, gave a talk Thursday night at Syracuse University on the nation’s financial crisis. During the speech he made no mention of his fall from grace.
Spitzer called Gov. David Paterson “extraordinarily smart” but urged him to “communicate with greater precision and regularity and focus on what the priorities are.”
He also said state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo should stop being coy about his entry into the governor’s race and, if he is really a candidate, start answering important questions about state spending, ethics reform and the staggering budget problems.
•••
ACROSS THE BORDER: William Suitor, Youngstown, a pioneer in rocket belt development, will be speaking Thursday at the Niagara Falls, Ontario, Public Library. The 7:30 p.m. free event sponsored by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Niagara Centre.
He also will sign copies of his book, “Rocketbelt Pilot’s Manual,” and his more than 1,000 flights around the world. The library is located at 4848 Victoria Ave.
In 1965, Suitor flew the rocketbelt as a James Bond stunt double in the movie “Thunderball,” starring Sean Connery.
Suitor also made a memorable landing at the opening of the 1984 Olympics.
Contact reporter Don Glynn at 282-2311, ext. 2246.
Columns
GLYNN: Race walk champ keeping in shape
- Columns
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HAMILTON: BOE and kids, or the SPCA dogs?
There is example after example of otherwise qualified Niagara Falls’ board of education members and staffers lending their time and efforts to organizations outside of the school district’s core business.
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GLYNN: Trust in SPCA shelter must be restored
Stories about the operations at the Niagara SPCA shelter shape the image of sickening and disgusting treatment of animals.
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BRADBERRY: Old medicine and new challenges
Having suffered and recovered from my fair share of illnesses and injuries over the years, I have come to believe that sometimes the treatment and the cure of my condition can seem to be far worse than whatever I may think is ailing me at the moment.
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CONFER: Federal spending derailed by Amtrak
We’ve been inundated with news reports about the fiscal woes of the U.S. Postal Service. Why is it that we never hear anything about another federal enterprise facing ongoing losses -- Amtrak?
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CITY BEAT: Worthwhile change is never easy
When I was a much younger and thinner reporter, I got a call one day from a particularly irate gentleman who asked me “if my newspaper knew what it was doing?”
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HIGGS: Family stories and a slow start to the 1800 block
I heard from a couple of my readers who added a few tidbits that I did not know about their families.
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GLYNN: Cuomo launches drive for better teachers
Gov. Andrew Cuomo appears determined to address the outrageous conditions that have surfaced in schools across the state because incompetent teachers are protected by their unions.
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PFEIFFER: Beilein still serving area through scholarship
Longtime Niagara County Sheriff Tom Beilein may have moved on to keeping watch over the state’s corrections institutions, but his love of our region remains. Nothing proves that better than the announcement this week of the third annual Thomas A Beilein Scholarship for high school seniors here.
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HAMILTON: Garabedian and the art of vocational education
I think that former Trott school teacher and vocational education specialist Art Garabedian has it right, vocational education is good for Niagara’s economy.
During State of the Union Address, President Obama challenged the nation’s manufacturers to ask themselves what they could do to bring those manufacturing jobs back to America. -
GLYNN: Mayor excited about Obama tourism initiative
President Obama takes a lot of heat, especially in an election year, but in one area even his most vocal critics must agree he is right on the money.
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