Brian Kilby, Olympic marathon runner from Coventry

As any avid Olympics watcher knows, fourth is the worst place to finish, and after more than 26 miles of endurance the feeling is even worse. That was the fate of Brian Kilby at the Olympic marathon in Tokyo in 1964, although it was some achievement given that a few weeks earlier he had been thrown through the windscreen of a car in a road accident and needed 28 stitches.
For the slight and red-haired Kilby to finish fourth in a time of two hours, 17 minutes and two seconds showed the kind of dedication to training that turned him from no more than a decent club runner to make his Olympic debut four years before in Rome.
With a punishing training regime of 170 miles a week, Kilby was a familiar sight on the roads of his home city of Coventry. He steadily improved and finished in a creditable 29th position with a time of 2:28:55 in his first Olympic marathon in Rome in 1960. As one of the first athletes to train twice a day, Kilby was hungry for improvement.
His dedication was rewarded by his performance in Tokyo in 1964, although he was somewhat overshadowed by his Coventry Godiva Harriers team-mate Basil Heatley, who stormed through the field in the latter part of the race to take a silver medal behind the great Ethiopian Abebe Bikila. Kilby liked to joke that he was therefore not only the second Briton in the race but the second person from Coventry to finish.
Brian Kilby was born in Coventry in 1938. A shy and rather singular child, he hated playing team sports at school but discovered a liking for the loneliness of long-distance running at the age of 13. He quickly established himself as the best in the school at cross-country running despite competing against boys who were sometimes two or even three years older than him; he won the Coventry Schools championship in the under-15 age group.
Kilby became a trainee draughtsman at the engineering company GEC after leaving school. Aged 20 he was poised to join the army until he failed his medical because the stones under his running spikes in a six-mile race the previous day had cut and bruised his feet. Spared the square bashing, he took it as a sign to focus more seriously on his running. Thin, wiry and weighing just under nine stone, he was perfectly built for the endurance of marathon running.
In 1960 Kilby won his first Amateur Athletic Association (AAA) of England marathon championship, at Welwyn Garden City, in a time of 2:22:45. He would go on to win the next four AAA marathon titles.He won his first big title in Great Britain vest with gold in the marathon on the sweltering streets of Belgrade at the 1962 European Championships in 2:23:18, more than a minute ahead of the second-placed runner. Still a diffident young man, he was overwhelmed by the civic reception that awaited him back in Coventry.
A few weeks later he won a gold medal for England in the marathon at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, in 2:21:17. A patrician-voiced Pathé News broadcaster reported “What a blessed relief, pouring rain and degrees cooler … otherwise it would have been dangerous to run a race of 26 miles … well, all they have to do now is keep on to the end of the road for 26 miles … and what a reception as Kilby ran back into the stadium apparently as fresh as if he only ran one mile.”
By now he was becoming used to the attention, winning the Sportsman of the Year award from the Sports Writers’ Association, ahead of the racing driver Graham Hill and the cricketer Ted Dexter.
Unluckily for Kilby, his best season was in 1963, the year before the Tokyo Olympics. In winning that year’s AAA championship in Coventry Kilby hit the front after eight miles and ran from ten to 15 miles in five metronomic five-minute miles to move 43 seconds ahead of his clubmate Basil Heatley. Kilby continued to pull away in the final six miles to cross the line in 2:16:45 with a huge margin of victory of three minutes and 11 seconds.
The News of the World wrote: “Kilby ran like a man who could become Olympic champion. This is a heavy burden to put on any sportsman’s shoulders. But if any man could claim to be on terms with the grinding monotony of the road run it is the 25-year-old red-haired Coventry Godiva Harrier. He grows like a champion every time he runs.”
That same year Kilby ran what was then the second-fastest marathon ever in a time of 2:14:43 in the pouring rain of a course around Port Talbot, south Wales.
Injuries limited his marathon success after 1964 but he continued to compete. His final marathon was in Kyoto, Japan, in 1969. He failed in an attempt to qualify for the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
In later years he remained involved in athletics and managed the Leicester sports stadium. His first wife, Majorie, predeceased him. He is survived by their children, Helen and Michael, and by his second wife, Sue.
A popular figure in the running fraternity of Coventry that has produced other world-class competitors such as David Moorcroft, Kilby said that he and his fellow marathon runners would often enjoy a few drinks together after marathons. After 26 miles the drinks were, he argued, well earned.
Brian Kilby, marathon runner, was born on February 26, 1938. He died on June 30, 2024, aged 86