IT'S an awfully long way to go, and a great deal of agony to get nowhere fast, but Jill Prescott returned from Boston, Massachusetts this week with a gold medal from the world indoor rowing championships to add to her British and European titles.

Indoor rowing, it may safely be assumed, is a first even for the fish-out-of-water Backtrack column.

In a sport which clearly demands that contestants really put their backs into it, Jill's achievement is all the more remarkable because just five years ago she fractured several vertebrae, and broke a leg, in a car accident.

The world events take place over a standard 2,000m, on rowing machines. "To be honest, it's killing," she says. "You've done 1,500 metres and your whole body is screaming, but there's still 500 metres to go.

"I guess it's addictive in a way, and these days some of the best competitors have never set foot in a boat, but I still want to do more water work. You can't beat the river, or the views of Durham Cathedral above you, but it's still a great training tool."

Jill, a Durham-based vet, joined Durham Amateur Rowing Club two-and-a-half years ago when her triplet daughters - ten top-grade A-levels and 26 GCSE A* passes between them - left home to study medicine at different universities.

Her husband Richard is a consultant at Bishop Auckland hospital; her late father-in-law, Dr Donald Prescott, was a hugely respected GP in the town and club doctor in the Bishops' Amateur Cup heyday. Parents and grandparents on both sides of the family were doctors.

"The children leaving home left a huge hole in my life, rowing was a way of filling it," says Jill, whose success is now in the 50-54 age category.

"I was always quite fit, running seven miles most days, but after the accident games like tennis were hard because of all the twisting. Rowing's fine."

The Boston event, officially the CRASH-B Sprints, began in 1982, described as a "tonguein- cheek way for Boston's rowers to stay in shape in the dead of winter on a relatively unknown piece of equipment.

CRASH-B stood for Charles River All Star Has-Beens.

Now the event attracts rowers from all over the world, the oldest 90. Winners also receive a claw hammer, because that was the original prize.

Geoff Graham, Jill's coach at Durham Amateur Rowing Club, describes the "lesser known" sport as "a very good substitute"

for the real thing.

"Although it's static, you need all of the strength and most of the skills that you would on the river. Jill has done wonderfully well in so short a time, especially in view of the accident."

Jill herself has missed only five days' river rowing because of the indoor commitments.

"If you can get out on a nice day there's nothing better in the world, but imagine it in winter."

The inside story? "I might be going nowhere, but I think I can do it still faster."

THOUGH hardly what might be termed a water baby - he'll be 70 in May - our old friend Arthur Puckrin came third overall at the weekend in the international 12- hour swimming championships in Switzerland.

The Middlesbrough barrister clocked up 15 miles, almost inevitably breaking the world Over 60s record in the process.

More usually testing his mettle at "Ironman" events - a multi-triathlon of running, cycling and swimming - he believed swimming to be his weakest discipline. It may hardly be said that he crawled.

"The boys and girls went off like rockets but after three hours they were dead and I was just coming to life," he says.

The event was in a pool. "They have fabulous facilities over there.

"All we seem to have is places for kiddies to splash around with balloons. I don't mind that.

"It would just be nice to have somewhere for serious swimmers, too."

Rewarded with a medal and a bouquet as big as himself, he took particular pleasure in beating Tri-Team Switzerland.

"I had a little laugh about that," says Arthur diplomatically, "but only to myself, of course."

ARTHUR took his thermals to Switzerland but found it warmer than Teesside. Sharon Gayter knows how he feels - that is to say, perished.

The winter has seriously affected the Guisborough ultrarunner's asthma, which may explain why she's so much looking forward to this weekend's 190k, self-sufficient event in Libya.

Sharon, 43, hopes to break her own 36-hour course record. "Only the snakes, spiders and creepycrawlies worry me," she reports.

"An anti-venom pump is compulsory kit."

At the end of March there's a 230k self-sufficient trek across the Sahara, billed as the toughest race on earth, followed by a 48- hour event in western France and, on July 14th, the "hottest race on earth" - that one's 135 miles across Death Valley.

At the end of September, there's a new challenge - a 110- mile race along the Cleveland Way. "I hope," says Sharon, "that I may have warmed up by then.

Wilkinson hands over the welfare reins to new charge Amanda

A STABLE lass at Middleham, racing capital of North Yorkshire, broke her leg on Tuesday after being kicked by one of her ungrateful charges.

"Across the country there'll have been four or five similar cases on that one day alone.

It's still a very dangerous business," supposes Raye Wilkinson, retiring today after almost 30 years in racing welfare.

Mostly it's been with stable lads and lasses, whatever their age, mucking in with the muckers out. Unlike some of those also-ran horses, Raye never ducked a hurdle, always went the extra mile.

He'd had a promising and well-qualified career in children's social work, spent holidays mucking out ("my wife though it a bit strange") finally gave up a £4,800-a-year job in local government to work as a £37.50-a-week yardman.

He joined the Stable Lads Welfare Trust, now Racing Welfare, in 1978 - the Trust's first paid employee at Middleham.

"It's been a great job for me," he insists, "far better than spending my time in some God-forsaken, cashstrapped, politically correct council office.

"Racing is addictive, it bites you, you can't shake it off. I'd never have forgiven myself if I hadn't taken an opportunity like this."

His office in Middleham Market Place, so small that the door has to open outwards, has become a sanctuary not just for racing workers kicked in the leg but, metaphorically at least, for all those kicked in the teeth.

Remarkably, he's also remained on good terms with trainers and owners, raised many thousands for charity, become a familiar local sportsman and a faithful football scout, presently for Plymouth Argyle and York City. "I was Jack Watson's apprentice," he says and by no means alone in his indebtedness to the scout master.

Last year he received a lifetime's achievement award.

"Raye has been a quite wonderful asset to the racing world up here," says Leyburn trainer Ernie Weymes.

He's succeeded by 35-yearold Amanda Donkin, holder of a psychology degree - "It ticked all the boxes," she says - and former landlady of the Brus Arms at Tanfield, near Ripon.

Until last week she worked for Racing Welfare at Newmarket - "the ladies' was only slightly smaller than my new office" - and still rode out every day. She hopes to find more riding out work at Middleham.

"It's a bug," she says.

"There's just nothing like working with horses and with racing people. It's fantastic.

You know the risks and you do it; touch wood, I've been lucky."

Raye worked at a children's home in Bradford, had only once in his life been to a race meeting and rarely bet on the horses - "Even now, if I've a fiver on I get into a sweat" - was asked by someone in his care to try to find him a job in racing.

He'd once backed an Ernie Weymes horse, remembered the name, rang him though he'd no idea even where Middleham was.

"I told him the lad had been in trouble, in and out of Woolworth's with things in his pockets, but Ernie said he'd give him a three-week trial like everyone else.

"When I went up at the end, Tommy Fairhurst - then the head lad - asked me if I could find another dozen like him.

He even made his own bed, that's what came of being in a children's home."

Bitten himself, he took a social services job at Colburn, near Catterick Garrison, in order to be closer to the stables - then, amid yet greater uxorial astonishment, got a job there himself.

In 1978 he wrote to the Jockey Club suggesting that the stable lads and lasses needed help and was offered a job - without so much as an interview - by the Welfare Trust.

"I realised that there was a real case for someone to be there for them," he says.

"Ninety-nine per cent of kids who leave school at 15 or 16 still have their mothers to wash and iron and look after them, 99 per cent of stable lads and lasses are miles away from home with no-one.

"Whatever you do there's always someone below you, but you or I couldn't ride silly, highly-strung thoroughbred horses and they can.

"I've so much admiration for them, they're so resilient.

They're up at six o'clock every morning in all weathers, split shifts, often not very much money.

"People suppose it's glamorous, but there's nothing glamorous about lumping round a wet muck sack on a filthy Monday morning."

Though he may do a bit of shepherding, will remain one of the keenest scouts since Tonto and may even complete his autobiography, he hopes also to underline what they say about horses for courses - partly through organising Middleham-based racing breaks.

Still one of the lads at 65?

"Oh aye," says Raye, "I can think of nothing better than that."

AND FINALLY...

TUESDAY'S column sought the identity of the football team which played in five different divisions, including, the Conference, in the space of 20 years. Terry Wells was first to realise that it was MK Dons (nee Wimbledon.) Brian Shaw in Shildon today invites the name of the third division club for which David Beckham made his Football League debut.

Via Hungerford, with luck, the column returns on Tuesday.

10:36am Friday 29th February 2008

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