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G: She intrigued me. I couldn’t put my finger on why. She had come to the college with a bit of a name for what she had done in athletics but she was totally without ego. I’d seen her in the Olympic trials when she ran like a demented chicken but only just missed out on going to Barcelona. She was shy back then, very quietly spoken, and I couldn’t make out how someone could be as successful as she was but never act like they were successful. Was I reacting as an athletics fan or as a guy who thought this could lead to something? I don’t know.
For a few months we were busy doing our own things. But one evening next summer I fell in love with Gary. A group of us went to watch an athletics meeting. Gary was in the 1500m and, as it was his last race before the world student games, it was important. Somehow he misunderstood the starting time and turned up late. He was stressed and ran badly. I tried to console him and we just kind of ended up together. My feeling was, “Yes, this could work now”.
I was keen to develop our relationship, but I wasn’t sure whether he felt the same. He isn’t the best at telling people how he feels about things.
That Christmas, 1993, we went to the athletics club Christmas dinner as a couple. His memory of this night is not that sharp, but he got drunk and spent the evening talking to anyone and everyone. It is what he does when he has a few drinks; his natural shyness disappears and he bobs around the room, having fun with everyone. Being young, naive and a little insecure, I was upset because it felt like he was ignoring me.
G: There’s lots of stuff I did back then that, if she’d been different, if she hadn’t been the person she is, she would have thought “What the hell is he about? Forget him, move on. He’s not worth bothering about.” Thank God she didn’t.
It was far from the perfect relationship. We were an item but it wasn’t an all-consuming relationship and some people may have wondered how interested he really was. At times I certainly did.
As part of my course in European studies I had to spend some of my third university year in Germany. Gary was meant to come and say goodbye but didn’t show. It turned out he had tonsillitis but he didn’t pick up the phone and it seemed he just wasn’t interested. My attitude was, “Okay, that’s the end of it, it’s just not worth it, forget him.”
G: One night, around this time, I had a few drinks and ended up with someone else. Then I couldn’t face seeing Paula and couldn’t even face ringing her, even though she was going away. I did get tonsillitis but that was an excuse. I just wanted to disappear, not have to face this.
I moved into a little flat in Düsseldorf. After about two weeks the phone rang at 3am. It was a friend from Loughborough, a little bit drunk: “Paula, it’s about Gary. He got this new girlfriend. I just think you should know.”
That ended a relationship that had already died. I still had feelings for him but I was determined to let time take care of things. So I licked my emotional wounds and got on with my life. We remained friends, which was better than nothing. Gary was very good about it because he knew I would have liked more, but he never made it awkward for us.
People asked if I regretted that my feelings about Gary were so obvious. The answer is that I didn’t — your heart is not really that fragile, and if you don’t put it out there you’ll never get the rewards.
Gary had his new girlfriends, I had the odd boyfriend, but we stayed in close contact, developing an understanding, warm, supportive and unconditional friendship.
We even went together to New York for the Fifth Avenue Mile in both 1995 and 1996, when I won. After the 1996 race Gary and I went for a week’s break in Florida. We were best friends, extremely comfortable in each other’s company, we enjoyed hanging out together and shared lots of interests. But it was totally platonic.
Around this time I bought my first house in Loughborough and it seemed logical that Gary should be my lodger. But there was no thought in my mind that our relationship might go back to where it once was.
G: We were an unusual pair. We lived the life of being romantically involved even though we weren’t. We did the things that a couple would do but we did them purely as good friends. My family thought we were together, but I kept saying “No, we're not, we’re just very good friends.” Paula’s family would say, “Are you together?” “No, we’re not.”
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