Gateshead International Stadium - Athletics

Athletics

The first major athletic event held at the stadium was the Vaux Breweries International Athletics meet in July 1961. According to its sponsors, the highlight of this meet was the team three-mile race, won by the Blackpool and Fylde Athletic club and whose prize was a gold tankard. Attracted by a prize fund of £500 and the proximity to the AAA Championships, the event also attracted several world-class athletes from New Zealand, including the reigning 5000m metre Olympic champion Murray Halberg and Peter Snell, the reigning 800m Olympic champion. Watched by a capacity crowd of 10,000 spectators, both men won their respective races; Halberg placed first in the mile recording a time of 4:03:70, whilst Snell led a New Zealand one-two in the 880 yard event, finishing ahead of teammate Gary Philpott in 1:50:40.

When the comprehensive refurbishment of the youth stadium was completed more than a decade later, Brendan Foster (by this time a Gateshead Council employee) proposed an international athletics meet be held. On 3 August 1974, the first 'Gateshead Games' were staged in front of around 10,000 spectators. Four weeks before he would win the European 3000 metre title in the 1974 European Athletics Championships in Rome, Foster kept his earlier promise by winning in a world-record time of 7:35:20. According to journalist John Gibson, Foster's performance gave the meet, broadcast live by Tyne Tees Television, "landmark status". A plaque commemorating the record was later placed at the entrance to the stadium.

The Gateshead Games became an annual event which gave the stadium credibility as a major sporting venue. In his managerial capacity with Gateshead Council, Foster was increasingly able to attract world class athletes to the stadium. In 1977, Foster had to intervene when BBC Radio Newcastle provided the wrong Ethiopian national anthem which, when played, offended Miruts Yifter sufficiently that he and his teammates started off towards Newcastle International Airport. The intervention worked– in the end, Foster asked Yifter and his teammates if they would sing the anthem themselves, which they did in the middle of the stadium– and Yifter returned to outclass a field including Steve Ovett over 5000m. The track was resurfaced by Regisport in 1982 and the stadium's profile increased further in the summer of 1983 when Gateshead born athlete Steve Cram faced Sebastian Coe over 800m in the Gateshead Games. In front of a reported crowd of 15,000 who were "shoehorned into the bowl" and millions more watching on BBC's Sunday Grandstand, Cram prevailed to spark "pandemonium" in his final race before winning the gold medal at the 1983 World Athletics Championships in Helsinki.

In 1989, Gateshead hosted the Europa Cup. The games were to prove a watershed moment not just for Gateshead Stadium, but also for British Athletics. The mens competition was won for the first time by a Great Britain team captained by Linford Christie and which included Kriss Akabusi and Jack Buckner in an event which was a decade later described as having an "invigorating effect" on those who were in attendance. Four years later, on 30 July 1993, a stadium-record crowd of 14,797 watched Christie, by this time the reigning 100m Olympic champion, in action again – this time against his old rival Carl Lewis in a race where both men were reportedly paid £100,000 irrespective of the result. Christie won in a time of 10.07 seconds ahead of Jon Drummond in second and Lewis, who finished "a distant third". The 100m race was the highlight of the "high profile" Vauxhall Invitational meet, which was televised in the UK by ITV and was watched by around 10 million viewers and which also saw Michael Johnson, John Regis and Steve Cram competing in various events.

In August 1998, Gateshead was selected to again host the Europa Cup after the European Athletic Association switched the event from original host venue Martinique to avoid athletes travelling long distances in an Olympic year. This made Gateshead the first venue to host the event twice. On 16–17 July 2000, spectators at Gateshead once again saw Great Britain's men's team take the title; this time by half a point from Germany in second place and in spite of being shorn of ten first-choice team members. The women's event was won by Russia, who beat Germany into second place by thirteen points.

By 2003, Foster's 'Gateshead Games' had become the British Grand Prix, and on 13 July that year a 21-year-old Yelena Isinbayeva set a new world record of 4.82m in the women's pole vault event. Isinbayeva's achievement was so unexpected that only 1,000 of the 10,000 spectators witnessed it – the rest having left prior to the conclusion of what was the last event of the meet. For her achievement, she was given a bonus cheque for $50,000. On 27 June 2004, Isinbayeva returned to Gateshead to compete again. This time the event organisers decided to schedule the pole vault event earlier to avoid a possible repeat of a world record performance having been missed by both television and most of the paying spectators. They were rewarded when Isinbayeva defied extremely windy conditions to post a new record mark of 4.87m. Isinbayeva was the second woman to set a world record in the pole vault at Gateshead; Daniela Bartova also did so in 1995. In 2006, a crowd of 8,500 enjoyed unusually warm and humid weather and saw Asafa Powell equal the world record of 9.77 seconds in the men's 100m. The official, un-rounded time of 9.762 seconds was then the fastest time ever recorded. The meet was also notable for return to competition of Dwain Chambers after his ban for using performance enhancing drugs and also for Eliud Kipchoge breaking Brednan Foster's stadium record over 3000m which had stood for over three decades.

In 2010, the British Grand Prix at Gateshead was chosen as one of the inaugural fourteen Diamond League events, but despite offering an opportunity to watch Tyson Gay, Asafa Powell, Jessica Ennis and Vincent Chepkok among others, the attendance was unusually poor which caused the local press to wonder whether Gateshead would see its contract for the marquee event renewed. Those fears were to prove well-founded when a three-year contract for the staging of the British Grand Prix was agreed by UK Athletics to stage the event at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham; a move which prompted one report to lament that "the switch is a major blow to both Gateshead International Stadium and North-East sport in general, but can hardly be regarded as a major surprise given the dwindling support for major athletics events in the region." This loss was mitigated somewhat by the decision of European Athletics to award Gateshead Stadium the 2013 European Team Championships; the successor to the Europa Cup. In doing so, Gateshead becomes the only stadium to have hosted the European Team Championships on three occasions.