My greatest race: Stefano Mei

Italian looks back on the European 10,000m final in Stuttgart in 1986 which he won ahead of fellow countrymen Alberto Cova and Salvatore Antibo in 27:56.79.

I was very young when I went to my first major championships, the 1982 Europeans, where I ran the 1500m. When I was 16, I’d come eighth in the 3000m at the European Juniors in Bydgoszcz in 1979 in 8:10 and people were saying: “You’re the new Jim Ryun.”

People pushed me to step up but my coach, Federico Leporati, was very strict. He told me I had a lot of road to cover. That is why I stayed with him for 20 years. He didn’t want me to move up in distance just yet because I had an Achilles issue at the end of races where I could pass people but never kick.

I see these athletes who leave one coach for another so quickly and I can’t believe it. Mine was more than a brother, a little less than a father. He collaborated with and pushed me to stay down rather than to fly up.

We both felt I would eventually be a nice athlete over longer distances, so I did a lot of technical work and came back running 800s, 1500s, only moving up step by step. We didn’t want to lose the quality by doing more quantity.

In 1984, I made it to the Olympic Games in the 1500m and it was only afterwards that I really increased my kilometres, focused more on endurance and kept paying particular attention to how my muscles worked.

And so, in 1985, I started to run some good 5000s. I ran 13:20 in Zurich in fourth and I was second at the World Cup in Canberra behind Doug Padilla. I started to understand I was stronger, I had more natural endurance, and it increased to the point where I knew I could run with people like Alberto and make a different kind of push to the finish line by going from 300m out.

That European Championships was only my fifth competitive 10,000m. I did one when I was very young in 1980 but I didn’t do another one until 1986. My fourth one was in Oslo, where I ran my personal best, and that was the one which felt easiest because, with five laps to go, it still felt easy. And then came the Europeans.

By then, Alberto was established as a great runner. Salvatore was with us as well. It was a strange fight between us because we all had very different philosophies about the tactics, about the sport. We were not friends then.

In the European final, I changed pace four or five times before really pushing it on the last 100m. The secret was all technical but we’d also changed the mindset of Italian middle-distance running because people looked at us and said: “You have to do some work like a sprinter,” which I had done. Step by step, I’d built towards Stuttgart.

For us to take gold, silver and bronze as Italians and be on that podium was a fantastic moment, but I’m still sorry that we were not brothers together in that moment, too. It was bad on the day of the medal ceremony.

I remember that, in the 5000m some days later, when Jack Buckner was the winner, Salvatore and Alberto warmed up with the Portuguese and I was left alone. In the race, they started pushing a very fast pace with the Portuguese to try and give me some problems. But it didn’t work for them. On the last lap, it was just myself, Jack and Tim Hutchings [the three medallists]. The other two Italians were eighth and tenth.

Maybe we were young and stupid but no-one wanted to slow down the conflict in that moment. That was okay, though. In life, when you’re younger, you are brave but you are stupid, too so if I had this mindset in that moment, maybe I needed it.

I was sorry about those Europeans. I don’t live so happily with what should have been a beautiful moment because maybe, in another time, we could have all been good friends. Now we have a very good rapport but, with Tim and Jack, the friendship is still so strong and Jack’s European Championships record still stands before we go to Birmingham next summer.

That 10,000m victory is now water under the bridge. It was a little break of my career. But I learned something from that victory, that it is just a step in your life and you have to use that in a good way. If you think that you are alive with a victory, you’re wrong. And life is like that.

Now, as president of the Italian federation, I talk to the girls and boys and I try to explain to them that this is not a war. It is the best moment in their life and this is the best work that they’ll do for those five or ten years, so they have to take every single moment and not worry about disappointments, because every bad situation builds a success for tomorrow.

 As told to Mark Woods

Factfile

Born: February 3, 1963

Events: 1500m/5000m/10,000m

PBs: 3:34.57/13:11.57/ 27:43.97

Honours:

1990: European Championships 10,000m bronze

1986: European Championships 10,000m gold, 5000m silver; European Indoor Championships 3000m bronze

1982: World Cross Country Championships U20 bronze