<!--Don Glynn--><table width="234" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" background="http://static.cnhi.zope.net/flashpromo/niagaragazette/images/byline_234x60.jpg" height="60"><tr><td><div align="center"><font size="3" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By Don Glynn</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br /></font><font size="1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="mailto:don.glynn@niagara-gazette.com">don.glynn@niagara-gazette.com</a></font></div></td></tr></table>
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.
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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.
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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.
