The Old Man and the Longest Race - Part 2: Shuffling to Glory

The Old Man and the Longest Race - Part 2: Shuffling to Glory

Day 2 begins with chaos: Wally oversleeps, Cliff wakes at 2:30am instead of 6am, and runs unprepared on baked beans and two hours of sleep. What follows is an extraordinary five-day journey across 875 kilometres as a 61-year-old potato farmer defies every odd, battles injury and exhaustion, outwits his rivals, and becomes a national icon. This is the story of how Cliff Young won Australia's most grueling ultramarathon—and changed running forever. PEOPLE * Cliff Young – 61-year-old potato farmer, Beech Forest, Victoria; unlikely hero * Wally Zunneberg – Cliff's trainer, Colac Football Club massage man; gruff mentor figure * Terry "Wobbles" McCarthy – Support car driver; conflict with Wally * George Perdon – Elite runner, race favourite; "Gentleman George" * Joe Record – Cliff's training partner, second-place finisher; strategic rival * John Hughes – New Zealand detective, cocky frontrunner, previous record holder * Tony Rafferty – Irish expat, elite runner, fifth-place finisher * Siggy Bauer – World-class ultramarathoner, fourth-place finisher * Neil Kearney – Channel 10 journalist; pivotal TV moment * John Toleman – Race director, organiser * Martin Noonan – Westfield marketing executive, race visionary * Mary Young – Cliff's mother; presents garland at finish line * Eunice & Lorraine – Cliff's sisters; provide sustenance during race * Bob Hawke – Australian Prime Minister; sends congratulations telegram * Jeff Kennet – Victorian Opposition Leader; attends finish celebration * Martin Thompson – Public servant runner who quits from exhaustion * Keith Swift – Runner whose crew is hit by car; pulls out injured TOPICS * The 1983 Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon (875km) * Wally's alarm mistake (2:30am vs 6am start) * Cliff's physical challenges: shoulder pain, massive blisters, minimal sleep * The "Cliff Young Shuffle" – revolutionary running technique * Celebrity and adulation: Goulburn, Jugion, media coverage * Support crew dynamics: Wobbles' drinking, Wally's frustration * Neil Kearney's TV moment: Cliff eating pears straight from can * Channel 10 coverage and newspaper articles during the race * Nutrition strategy: baked beans, pumpkin, potatoes, pears * The psychology of leading: Cliff's determination to hold the lead * Joe Record's Wodonga betrayal: waking Cliff mid-sleep * The shin-splints moment: how Joe broke mentally * George Perdon's demoralisation from Cliff's early 2am start * Wally's knife-and-methylated-spirits blister treatment (Albury) * The broken support car 5km from finish line * Burke Street finish: kids nearly killing him with encouragement * The 10,000-person Melbourne CBD crowd (11:34pm Monday night) * Cliff's $10,000 prize and decision to split it with other runners * Reactions from elite runners: Hughes, Rafferty, Bauer, Perdon * Post-race celebrity: Don Lane Show, Michael Parkinson, Parliament House * The gumboot statue memorial in Beach Forest * Debunking myths: gumboots training, no formal training, the tortoise-and-hare fallacy * Legacy: the Young-Shuffle adopted by subsequent winners * Cliff's later career: subsequent races, marriage to Mary Howell, decline, stroke (2000), death (2003) Sources: Julietta Jameson, "Cliffy: The Cliff Young Story", Text, 2010 Cliff Young, "Cliffy's Book", High Country Publishing, 1995 Australian Story, ABC, How potato farmer Cliff Young outran the world’s best athletes | Australian Story

The Old Man and the Longest Race - Part 1: The potato farming, gumboot wearing, ultradistance runner.

SHOW NOTES - CLIFF YOUNG EPISODE 1 The Underdog In April 1983, a 61-year-old potato farmer from Beech Forest lined up alongside elite ultramarathoners for the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon—864 kilometres across Australia. Nobody took him seriously. Except the runners themselves. This is the story of how an old bloke in gumboots almost didn't make it through the first night, nearly hit by a semi-trailer and forced to rest on baked beans, setting up one of sport's greatest comebacks. PEOPLE * Cliff Young – 61-year-old potato farmer, Beech Forest, Victoria * Siggy Bauer – 1000-mile record holder * Robert Bruner – 200km Sri Chinmoy Festival champion * George Perdon – Australian ultradistance runner, Fremantle to Sydney record * Tony Rafferty – Irish expat, rival ultramarathoner * John Hughes – New Zealand runner, cocky frontrunner * John Toleman – Running coach, race organiser * Martin Noonan – Westfield marketing executive * Wally Zunneberg – Cliff's trainer and support crew * Mary Young – Cliff's mother TOPICS * The 1983 Westfield Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon * Cliff's failed 1000-mile run attempt (November 1982) * The water tank incident (January 1983) * Ultramarathon training and preparation * Support crews and logistics * The psychology of the underdog * Running on the Hume Highway in 1983 TIMESTAMPS (approximate) * 0:00 – Opening: Westfield Shopping Centre, April 26, 1983 * 3:45 – The field: Siggy Bauer, Robert Bruner, George Perdon, Tony Rafferty * 7:20 – Cliff Young introduced * 10:15 – How the race came to be: Toleman, Perdon, Rafferty rivalry * 15:30 – Martin Noonan's vision * 18:00 – The test run: Noonan and Cliff * 22:15 – The gumboots press conference * 26:00 – The 1000-mile run (November 1982) * 30:15 – The water tank disaster (January 1983) * 34:00 – Race day begins * 36:45 – The mad dash: Hughes, the cracking pace * 38:30 – The semi-trailer near-miss and Wally's alarm mistake * 40:00 – END OF PART 1 RESOURCES * "Cliffy: The Cliff Young Story" by Julietta Jameson * "Cliffy's Book" by Cliff Young

The Man Who Saved the World — Part 2: 85 Seconds to Midnight

On the night of September 26th, 1983, Stanislav Petrov stood alone in a Soviet bunker outside Moscow while every alarm in the building screamed that America had launched its missiles. He didn't make the call. This is the second and final part of the story of the man who may have saved human civilisation.. and was punished for it. In this episode: What was the Perimeter system — and why did the Soviets build it? The answer reveals everything about how close the world came to automated annihilation, and why the decision that night rested on one man's shoulders rather than a machine's. Why was Petrov different from every other officer in that bunker? His upbringing, his education, and the family trauma that shaped him all suggest the system had produced exactly one person capable of doing what he did. What happened when he was proved right? A reprimand. And what became of Petrov after the Soviet Union collapsed is covered. Primary and secondary sources for this episode: The principal secondary sources for this episode and its companion are: Taylor Downing, 1983: Reagan, Andropov and a World on the Brink (2018) — the most comprehensive single-volume account of the 1983 war scare. Nate Jones (ed.), Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise that Almost Triggered Nuclear War (2016) — a collection of declassified primary documents, including CIA assessments, NSA intercepts, and internal NATO communications, assembled by the National Security Archive. Additional material drawn from: Petrov's own interviews, particularly his 2013 BBC interview on the thirtieth anniversary of the incident, and the 2014 documentary The Man Who Saved the World. David Hoffman, The Dead Hand (2009) — Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Soviet nuclear programme and the 1983 war scare.

The Man Who Saved the World — Part 1: Stanislav Petrov and the most dangerous moment of the Cold War

Shortly after midnight on the 27th of September 1983, a forty-four-year-old Soviet military officer named Stanislav Petrov was sitting in a reclining chair in a bunker eighty miles south of Moscow when his early warning system told him that the United States had launched a nuclear missile at the Soviet Union. He had minutes to decide whether to believe it. This is the first of a two-part episode on Stanislav Petrov and the most dangerous moment of the Cold War that almost nobody has heard of. In this episode we set the scene: who Stanislav Petrov was, what he was doing in that bunker, and why the autumn of 1983 was the most terrifying season of the entire Cold War. Along the way we cover: The OKO satellite network — the Soviet early warning system that Petrov had helped build, and that he was now being asked to trust with the fate of civilisation. The near-misses that preceded 1983 — Vasili Arkhipov and the Soviet submarine B-59 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the man who refused to authorise a nuclear torpedo launch when his captain was convinced the war had already started. And Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in 1979 got out of bed at 3am and decided not to wake his wife before calling the president to recommend a retaliatory nuclear strike — only to be told, thirty seconds later, that someone had accidentally loaded a training tape into a NORAD computer. The state of the world in 1983, Reagan's Evil Empire speech, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the deployment of Pershing II missiles to West Germany, and why the Soviet Union read all of these not as defensive posturing but as the systematic assembly of a first-strike capability. Yuri Andropov: the former KGB chief who succeeded Nikita Brezhnev as General Secretary in November 1982. A dying man, conducting the business of running a nuclear superpower from a hospital clinic, connected to a dialysis machine, watching Ronald Reagan describe his country as the focus of evil in the modern world. Korean Air Lines Flight 007: shot down by a Soviet interceptor on the 1st of September 1983, killing 269 people including a US Congressman. The event that poisoned an already toxic relationship just weeks before Petrov's night in the bunker. And Reagan himself: who despite his bellicose rhetoric was privately horrified by Pentagon officials who believed nuclear war was winnable. "I can't believe that this world can go on beyond our generation," he said in a radio address from Camp David, "without someday some fool or some maniac or some accident triggering the kind of war that is the end of the line for all of us." The episode ends where it began — in Serpukhov-15, with Stanislav Petrov staring at a screen that now reads not launch, but missile attack. What he does next is the subject of Part 2. Content note: this episode contains discussion of nuclear weapons, mass casualty scenarios, and Cold War geopolitical history. No graphic content. Primary and secondary sources for this episode: The principal secondary sources for this episode and its companion are: Taylor Downing, 1983: Reagan, Andropov and a World on the Brink (2018) — the most comprehensive single-volume account of the 1983 war scare. Nate Jones (ed.), Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise that Almost Triggered Nuclear War (2016) — a collection of declassified primary documents, including CIA assessments, NSA intercepts, and internal NATO communications, assembled by the National Security Archive. Additional material drawn from: Petrov's own interviews, particularly his 2013 BBC interview on the thirtieth anniversary of the incident, and the 2014 documentary The Man Who Saved the World. The Reagan Presidential Library's archive of public papers and radio addresses. David Hoffman, The Dead Hand (2009) — Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Soviet nuclear programme and the 1983 war scare.

The Heroine of Singapore - Part 5: The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond

This is the final episode of the Heroine of Singapore arc. It begins with Elizabeth Choy sliding under the bars of her cell for the last time — certain she is being taken to Johor to be beheaded. Instead, a guard hands her her handbag and tells her she can go. After 193 days of imprisonment, beatings, starvation, and electrocution, the Kempeitai concluded that Elizabeth Choy was just trying to help. In this episode we also learn the truth about the missing $10,000 that triggered her arrest, a mystery whose answer, when it finally came, was almost unbearably simple. Sumida Haruzo was tried at the Double Tenth Trial in Singapore's Supreme Court. He smiled throughout even when giving testimony about the deaths of internees. Robert Heatlie Scott survived. Barely. When Singapore was liberated, he broadcast a message across Malaya and named Elizabeth Choy by name. After the war, Elizabeth met Mountbatten, attended the Instrument of Surrender, travelled to England, met the Queen, and became a national hero of Singapore. Research for this podcast episode was based entirely on my book, Survival in Singapore [https://www.amazon.com.au/Survival-Singapore-Australias-greatest-operation-ebook/dp/B0F4537QB2]. The recording of Elizabeth Choy was made in 1985, and is available at the National Archive of Singapore's webpage [https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/oral_history_interviews/record-details/94edbbb2-115f-11e3-83d5-0050568939ad]. Next on In Extremis — Operation Able Archer. 1983. The NATO exercise that nearly ended the world.