hen I joined the V.I. in 1955, there was not much
interest in athletics as there were hardly any people training on the
school field in the evenings. In those days the school sports, including
the heats were spread over two days because of the number of Classes.
The school population was at that time divided into 5 Classes - Class
5 for those below 13, Class 4 for those from 13 - 15, Class 3 for those
between 15 and 17, Class 2 for those from 17 to 19 and finally Class 1
for those above 19. The School Relay team was only one team consisting
of big, hulking runners from the upper Forms - Form 5 and Form 6.
In most of the inter-school relays races the V.I.
was not even mentioned as we were always beaten by the M.B.S.K.L.,
our deadliest rivals. They had good runners like George Ananda and then
for a couple of years they had Kok Lit Yoong. Next best was St. Johns
Institution. We were never in the limelight! The best we could come out
was second.
I remember Mani Jegathesan was my classmate in
the Batu Road School and when we joined the V.I. together in 1955,
we were put in the same Form One class. He was there only for a
year and left for the Anglo-Chinese School, Singapore. Jega won
the 1955 V.I. Sports Class 5 100 yards race in a record time of
12.8 seconds, but was beaten into second place in the 50 yard race
by Poon Yew Chin! Jegathesan was then quite a short fellow, not
quite yet the great athlete that he was destined to be, but I recall
his attire was classy - spikes and running shorts. He was the younger
brother of M. Harichandra who was a quarter miler in the V.I. in the
late forties and who had held the state record in the 440 yards.
Harichandra later represented Malaya in the 1956 Olympics. Jegathesan,
of course, garnered greater honours than his brother. He became Asia's
fastest man in 1966 at the Asian Games and represented Malaya/Malaysia
in the Olympics in 1960, 1964 and 1968.
1956 was the year when I began to show a lot of
interest in athletics. This was because Dr G. E. D. Lewis was the
new Headmaster and he made a lot of changes to the sporting scene -
he reintroduced the cross country run, reorganised the 5 Classes
into three - Class 3 for boys below 15, Class 2 for those between
15 and 17 and Class 1 for those above 17. This had an immediate
good effect on the sporting scene - athletics as well as other
games and swimming - as there were now more people in each class
and so there was more competition. As far as the School Sports was
concerned a lot of effort was saved as there was now less time involved
in the running of heats and the final events.
Dr Lewis also reintroduced compulsory Qualifying
Rounds in which each pupil scored a point for his House when he ran
under certain set times, or jumped and threw over certain set
distances. These points counted towards the total for his House and
helped determine the Champion House in athletics. He also introduced
the Olympic-style march past to start off the School Sports, an
innovation that many other schools later copied. But the Qualifying
Rounds concept was instrumental in encouraging an intense level of
competition among the eight Houses and in building up the standard
of V.I. athletics.
The V.I. Sports Meet was spectacular in those
days. The opening march past and the opening ceremony to music by
the VICC Band attracted many members of the public who packed the
hill slopes overlooking the field. The non-competing V.I. boys sat
in their own tents erected and decorated by themselves the day before.
(A prize was awarded later for the best decorated tent.) During a
recess in the Meet the band boys came out to perform some marches
or drills. The prize-giving at the end of the Meet was efficiently
done and the closing ceremony was moving and solemn as the School
Flag was lowered to the notes the Last Post played by a VICC
bugler.
Each house had three relay teams, one for each
Class, and as there are eight houses, there were 24 relay teams in
all. As a result more and more boys stayed back after school to
practice. From them the best people were picked for the school relay
teams. The training was centralised and the athletes were polished
until they excelled.
The VI was then the centre of a lot of athletic
activity for KL because of its strategic location and large field.
Before Dr Lewis came to the V.I. the national and state runners
used to train in Coronation Park but when the Stadium Merdeka was
built on that site, they migrated to the V.I. where they were
welcomed by Dr Lewis. The fact that 1956 was also an Olympics
Year helped boost interest in athletics. Those national and state
runners did their training every evening at the V.I. under a
dedicated Old Boy Lim Thye Hee who was the School Victor Ludorum
of 1925. He would first train these runners and having finished with
them he would spend some time with us, the present boys. Other Old
Boys like Linden Pavee, Lim Heng Suan (Lim Thye Hee's son) and Yeoh
Cheang Swi also went back to the V.I. to train as members of their
respective clubs but found time to train our boys when they had
time. Such was their love for their old school.
I specialised as a starter. It is ideal if
you can start off just as the starter's gun goes off; that split
second gained makes a lot of difference. I was coached by Lim Thye
Hee who was an indefatigable trainer. He put us through our paces -
he timed us, corrected our body movements and postures, and pushed us
through endurance rounds. Those were the days when foreign coaches
hired at astronomical sums were unheard of - our locals offered their
services for free. Lim Thye Hee was coach for the 1954 Malayan
contingent to the Asian Games at Manila and I understand that he
passed the hat around and paid for part of our Malayan athletes'
expenses from his own pocket. He was also coach to the 1956 Malayan
Olympics team. Where are such selfless coaches these days?
Dr Lewis was very hospitable to these old Boys and
welcomed them back to the school as he realised their value to the
school. As he also lived on the school premises he would stroll onto
the field every evening to chat with everyone. As a result there
slowly developed this very supportive and cooperative atmosphere.
The older boys were not too interested as they were more academically
inclined. We were still losing to the M.B.S.K.L. in my early years,
but we younger ones were training hard under the guidance of our
seniors. The seeds of the V.I.'s success had been planted.
In October 1955 Jesse Owens visited the V.I. to
give training to our local athletes, including V.I. boys. He was
the 1936 Olympic sensation who had garnered 4 gold medals in the
100 metres, 200 metres, long jump and the 4x100 metres relay in Berlin.
In January 1957 Parry O'Brien, the specialist in
discus and shot putt came to the V.I. to give a demonstration and
again his visit attracted large crowds. O'Brien was fresh from his
shot putt and discus triumphs at the Melbourne Olympics the previous
year. In fact O'Brien actually broke the Malayan shot put record
in one of his demonstration throws, to the applause of all of us.
And an American coach, whose name I forget, also came to the VI to
train our boys in a coaching clinic. We V.I. boys always stood to
benefit from these visits.
In 1956 I was the Class Three athletics champ
and in 1957 and 1958 I was the Class 2 champion. However, in
1959, when I entered Class One, I encountered fierce competition
from the likes of R. Krishna the School Athletics Champion and
Victor Ludorum, and was beaten by him. In 1960 I was again
beaten for the Championship title, this time by Felix Gabriel who
had transferred to the V.I. from St Gabriel's School.
Training beside the cream of the country helped
the V.I. tremendously. From 1956 to 1958 the pool of young athletes
grew quickly as interest in athletics grew. I remember rounding up
all the young boys from all houses for training. It was all voluntary.
We would just say that there was training that day in the evening
and they would all turn up. Such was the attitude shown by the boys
then. We jogged, practised our starts, baton passing and learned
various techniques. In 1957 our fortunes started to change when
Kok Lit Yoong joined the VI from the M.B.S.K.L. to be in our Sixth
Form Arts and naturally he was put into our relay team as the anchor.
We began to win most of the relays, except the times we posted were
still not that good. We began to have junior relay teams as well.
By 1958 the senior team of Kok Lit Yoong, P.
Nathan, Lee Yuen Hon and Wong Yin Fook were winning the senior
relays. They set a Malayan School Boys record of 44.6 seconds in
the 4x110 relay at the Malayan Telecommunications sports at the
Merdeka Stadium. Meanwhile our youngsters were getting so good that
the there was hardly any difference in the standard between the
Class One and Class Two sprinters. We could insert one of the Class
Two sprinters into the Class One team and still win! We were becoming
strong in all departments - 4x110, 4x220 and 4x440 yards (in those
days the metric system was not in use).
By 1960 we had reached our peak. Runners like
Kenny Siebel, Felix Gabriel and Eddy Lee and many others were
winning their races all over the place. The Class 1 relay team
was unbeaten in Selangor, having taken part in fifteen relays in
all. Our 4x440 quartet (comprising Zambri Yahya, Kenny Siebel, Felix
Gabriel and myself) was selected to represent Selangor Schools and
won their event in the Federation of Malaya Athletics meet. To cap
it all not only was I the School Athletics Captain, I was also
made Captain of the Selangor Combined Schools Meet that year.
Our boys participated in this meet and many managed to garner medals
in their events.
Dedicated teachers like Terry Rajaratnam and
Valentine Manuel were at the V.I. field to train us in the
afternoons; they even accompanied us in the Cross Country training.
The route took us from the School along Jalan Kerayong towards the
old (and sole) airport and wound its way amongst the Chinese
graveyards, emerging amongst the Divison One government quarters
area of Petaling Hill. It then went downhill along Hose Road, past
Edinburgh Circle and back to the School again.
I remember the first Cross Country Run in 1956
when I was among the lead runners, well ahead of the rest. Being
dressed in vivid colours and running at speed past the squatter
huts was a sure invitation for their fierce guard dogs to chase
after us. We had to scramble over graves to escape those snapping
jaws. Some unfortunate Shaw House boys, garbed in the red colour
of their House, attracted the attention of some cows and had to
forget to run the Cross Country and run for their lives instead.
Of course when the main body of runners arrived at the scene in
a seething mass of thumping feet and dazzling colours, the
four-legged aggressors turned tail and scampered away.
Dr Lewis introduced a Challenge Trophy for the
Perak Combined Schools Cross Country competition in 1960. Our
Cross Country team was so good by then that we went to Ipoh and
beat Anderson School and other Perak Schools to win this Challenge
Trophy. I still recall this run vividly as we ran across real Cross
Country terrain, over tin mining land and quarries and even through
a limestone tunnel. We waded waist-deep across the Kinta River and,
as the weather turned bad, had to run through drenching rain,
thunder and lightning! What a change from the forbidding Chinese
graveyards and the verdant Petaling Hill! And for good measure,
back in K.L., we also won the Cross-Country trophy for the Selangor
Combined Schools.
Dr Lewis also donated a challenge trophy for an annual meet between
the V.I. and the Federation Military College. The FMC boys were
known for their toughness and athletic prowess. We won the first
meet in 1957 but lost it in 1958 because the FMC were good in every
department and our standard then was still not high enough yet.
(There were 36 events in all, 12 for each of the three classes,
and the rules also stipulated that no athlete could take part in
more than four events.) It would be another three years before we
finally snatched the trophy back.
I will never ever forget the 1960 meet against
the FMC. I was the starter in the 4x110 yards relay and the starter
was standing very close to me with his starter's gun. His gun was so
loud when it went off that it gave me a shock, my baton brushed
against my shorts as I started off and slipped from my fingers! I picked
up the baton and lost a fraction of a second as a result. I shall
never forgive myself for that incident and every Victorian present
shared my agony. Whatever it was, even if we had won that relay, the
V.I. would have still lost overall to the FMC. They had Shahruddin
the best sprinter in the country at that time with sub-ten second
times in the 100 yards. He even beat Mani Jegathesan at that time.
In the VI sports of 1958, however, when eight
schools competed in the relay finals, we managed to beat the FMC
Senior team by a clever tactic. There were the 4x110 relay for the
Class 2 runners and 4x220 for the Class 1 boys. At that time our
fastest runners were spread over both the teams; Wong Yin Fook and
I were both in Class 2 at that time because of our age but we were
as fast as the Class 1 runners. But we knew we did not have the chance
to win both the Class 1 and the Class 2 relays because of this diluted
strength. So, as Athletics Vice-Captain, I made the decision to move
myself and Yin Fook over to the Class One team. Our gamble worked -
our Class 2 team did not get first place as expected (they were second
to the FMC which came first) but we won the more prestigious Class 1
event!
We had such an excellent reputation in athletics
that many schools and organisations like the Telecoms, Malayan Railway,
the Public Works Department and the Royal Malayan Police were inviting
us to take part in their sports. No meet was complete without the V.I.
relay team present! There was one day, at the height of the athletics
season, we sent SEVEN relay teams to compete. Some of us, like myself,
ran in more than one event at one meet, as well. The V.I. Sports
Secretary, Mr S. G. Dorai Raj, was anxiously asking me, "Are you
sure, Yew Khee, that we can do it? I don't want to be an alarmist,
but have you got enough runners?" I assured him that we could. And
we did - we had five first places, one second place and one unplaced,
and this because one of the runners, Thiruchandran, suffered a torn
muscle!
If the venues were close by, we would rush from
one race by bicycle in our running attire. I remember after having
won the race at the Police Depot our team cycled as fast as we could
to the nearby Technical College, arriving just as they were calling
all the participating teams, including the V.I., to report to the
starter. Not even bothering to lock our bicycles, we chucked them
and ran to report ourselves. Even then we won our event! And to
collect our prizes, we did the same thing, cycling furiously to the
various venues, arriving just in time to collect the trophies.
It may be surprisingly to learn that no masters
followed us in these meets, although they did accompany us on
outstation trips. We did not need them; we were reliable and responsible
enough to turn up on time at all our meets. Our runners were all good
runners by then, their standards more or less equal to each other.
This was the result of the talent spotting and training that we had
initiated from 1957 onwards.
It took a few years before we could reap the
harvest, but the results were already apparent in 1958. Just considering
first places only, that year, we won 10 of the 22 relay races, in 1959
18 out of 30 races, and, in my final year in 1960, 17 out of 31
(there were a few more races run after The Victorian went to
press which were not printed). Checking further in the old school
magazines, I see that we won 17 relays out of 29 in 1961, 10 out of
22 in Dr Lewis' final year, 1962. The next three years were: 4 out of
21, 8 out of 12 and 4 out of 12.
Unfortunately, after Dr Lewis, all the non-V.I.
athletes and even V.I. Old Boys, including myself, were chased
away from the V.I. field by the new V.I. Headmaster in 1964 who
valued the grass more than the Old Boys. As a result, later
generations of V.I. athletes forever lost the chance to mix with
their peers, to learn from each other and to be inspired by state
and national runners. The latter, in disgust, went to the Kampong
Pandan field instead for their training.
This insensitive action alienated a lot of the
Old Boys who never returned to their Alma Mater again. Dr
Lewis' successor was lucky that he had reaped a rich harvest of
good athletes from the seeds sown in the late fifties and the early
sixties. But this bounty could only last that long as the investments,
reputation and achievements of that Golden Age of athletics inevitably
faded away with a dearth of coaches and role models who could have
come freely from the ranks of the V.I. Old Boys.
By the seventies the decline in V.I. athletics
had become perceptible. This was a great tragedy for V.I. athletics
and breaks my heart as a former School Athletics Captain to see this
happen. Today, looking around the empty V.I. field and at the tarnished
Athletics Championship trophies gathering dust in the V.I. Museum, I
see the result of all that selfishness and short-sightedness and I
mourn the loss of a great and glorious chapter in the history of
this great school.
I cannot end without recording here my appreciation
of the Old Boys who helped train us at the V.I. field and of the many
wonderful V.I. sportsmen of my era who raced against me, with me,
and for me. They gave unstinting and unselfish service with only the
School's glory in mind. It has been one great race, chaps!
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