Joe McGhee was one of Scotland’s most outstanding record-breaking marathon and distance runners in the 1950’s. He joined Shettleston Harriers in 1952 from St Monan’s AAC and competed for the club in their most successful era of distance running. Joe was a multiple Scottish marathon champion and record holder but his stand out performance came when he won the marathon at the Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, Canada in 1954. The race has been called one of the ten greatest of all time. Run in extreme conditions, with only six competitors finishing, it is mostly remembered for the collapse of England’s Jim Peters. Little recognition has ever been given to the winner Joe McGhee.
This year Pitch Publishing Ltd have published The Forgotten Winner: The Notorious Vancouver Marathon 1954 for the first time, marking the tenth anniversary of Joe’s death. This book describes first-hand what it feels like to run alongside an elite field of athletes, while providing inspiration and advice to aspiring runners.
The book is available to buy online and is currently available in Waterstones stores throughout Glasgow and Central Scotland.
Joe’s running career extended well beyond his success in the Vancouver Marathon. He competed for Shettleston Harriers until 1962 in which time he won any races including the Scottish Marathon Championship in 1954, 1955 and 1956. Each year he set a new championship record with the best time of 2:25:44 in 1956. He was the last athlete to win three consecutive Scottish marathon titles until Fraser Clyne of Aberdeen in 1992,1993 and 1994. Joe represented Scotland in the International Cross Country Championship in 1954, 1955 and 1959 and received the Donald McNab Robertson Trophy, awarded annually as a joint decision by the Scottish Marathon Club and the SAAA’s, in 1953, 1954, 1955 and 1956 and . There can be no doubt about his quality as an athlete.
Joe also pays tribute to his coach at Shettleston Harriers Allan Scally. In a letter to Frank Scally in 2002 Joe writes,
“I cannot end without some words of appreciation for Allan Scally. To me he epitomised the essential friendliness of Shettleston Harriers.”
I valued Allan not only as a coach however but above all as one of my greatest friends, unassuming yet with an impish sense of fun. My Dad and I would go home with him for tea after a Saturday run to be welcomed by Lizzie his wife. I frequently visited them on a Sunday too, and even during the week after meeting him at his work in the Mason’s shop below the Central Station.
Other Club members would frequently drop in especially on the Sunday and Lizzie would busy herself providing meals for us all. I was proud to be one of her ‘Scallywags’ as she used to call us.”
Extracts taken from Scottish Distance Running History