Andy Norman

Published on Thursday 27 September 2007 01:03

Sports entrepreneur, consultant and athlete manager

Born: 21 September, 1943, in Ipswich.

Died: 24 September, 2007, in Birmingham, aged 64.

ANDY Norman was the most influential figure to preside over the transition from amateur to professional athletics in the United Kingdom.

A sports entrepreneur and consultant, Norman managed some of the biggest names from the golden era of British athletics: Steve Ovett, Steve Backley, Jonathan Edwards, Linford Christie, Fatima Whitbread and Colin Jackson.

But, despite keeping a low profile, he could also court controversy and was implicated in drug allegations and the suicide of a journalist, Cliff Temple.

Originally from Suffolk, Norman became a high flyer in the Metropolitan Police before becoming desk sergeant at Bromley police station, in Kent. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, this was to be the improbable power base of international athletics as it entered the modern era.

With time on his hands and as a member of the Southern Counties AAA and manager of the Metropolitan Police athletics team, Norman set about organising open meetings at Crystal Palace which were to be the proving ground for much bigger things. In 1974 he helped organise the International Athletes Club meeting at Crystal Palace, one of the early television spectaculars.

As a useful club quarter-miler and half-miler who could boast times of 49.8 and 1:54.1, Norman understood better than most officials the needs of athletes for regular competition.

In time, and managing the emergent talent of one of Britain's greatest milers, Steve Ovett, Norman was also first to spy the needs of international promoters, who required big names for their spectaculars.

This was still in the era of "shamateurism", when payments to athletes were strictly forbidden. In popular parlance, Norman became the Mr Fix-it, the man with the stash of brown paper bags that were surreptitiously handed over at the conclusion of big meetings.

An anecdote that Bislett promoter Sven Arne Hansen tells, graphically illustrates Norman's down-to-earth modus operandi. In 1978, Norman, whose first wife, Gerd, was Norwegian, was involved in bringing the stars to Oslo. That year he had lined up Kenyan record breaker Henry Rono to contest the 3,000m. Rono had already set world records for the 5,000m and 10,000m that summer and the crowds flocked to the Bislett stadium to watch a highly anticipated third world record attempt.

On the start line, however, a lethargic Rono complained to Hansen that he didn't feel like running. Racing across the infield, the panic-stricken promoter asked Norman what they should do. Without hesitation came the reply: "Offer him $1,000." Bislett got its record.

If this had been made public at the time, there would have been an outcry. But Norman was his ebullient self when recalling the era, saying: "Nobody was breaking the law, just the regulations of the sport."

The situation, however, was unsustainable and in 1982 Norman went to the International Amateur Athletics Federation conference in Athens and argued successfully for athlete trust funds to be set up. Full-scale professionalism was just around the corner.

On the way, there were ructions and scandals. In 1987 the Times published a series of articles arguing that Norman's recipe for success for British athletes was down to manipulating drug tests. Though strenuously denied by Norman, he never sued the newspaper over the allegations.

Then in 1994 Norman was sacked from his powerful position as promotions officer within British athletics when he was implicated in the suicide of a Sunday Times journalist, Cliff Temple. A year earlier, Temple had been preparing an expos of Norman's then girlfriend Fatima Whitbread's business dealings. Norman phoned him up to object, issuing thinly veiled threats of violence - all caught on tape - and threatening to spread false rumours of a sexual nature.

Temple went ahead with his story and Norman went ahead with his threats. Though Temple was depressed at the break-up of his marriage, the coroner found that Norman's unfounded allegations were a contributing factor to his suicide.

Ever the man to spot a business opportunity, Norman then diverted his energies to the emerging countries of eastern Europe as the fall of communism created new markets for his unique talents. Meetings suddenly sprang up in previously unknown locations where British athletes could cut their teeth against foreign opposition.

In 1997 Norman married Whitbread, but they became estranged two years ago and Norman was living in a council flat near the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham. The flat had been a gift for life from a city council grateful to Norman for making Birmingham the centre of so many athletics promotions.

Among his many roles, Norman was advertising commissioner for the world athletics body, the IAAF, the role he had been carrying out in Stuttgart before his death.

He is survived by his first wife, by whom he had two children, and Whitbread and their son.

MICHAEL BUTCHER