Pre-Sydney Corporate Cup History
Many current members of the Sydney Corporate Cup would be unaware of how the current Sydney Corporate Cup evolved. There are still several runners who run in the current series who also participated in Run 1 of Series 1, and most have been contacted for assistance in compiling these recollections. In particular, Laurie Coleman has kept many of the records of the early years of the Corporate Cup meeting minutes and result sheets and has made them available for this report. Laurie was Secretary of the Corporate Cup committee from Series 13 onwards for several years and also attended the inaugural meeting when it was decided for each year to hold three series each of six runs in the current format of the Corporate Cup.
However, the history of the Corporate Cup predates the current format, and its origins are based on the Federal Government’s “Life be in it” program of the 1980’s. Bill Carlsen, John Holmes and Ian Gibson from UTS organised the first Corporate Cup run over a distance of about 6.2 km. Ian Graves has provided copies of the certificates he was given for each run for Series 1 onwards. Runners had to complete the certificates, showing their times for each run. The first run was held on 10 February 1982, and the first series comprised 8 runs. Ian’s best time for the course in Series 1 was 21:18 and he lowered this to 19:55 on 9 November 1982. After Series 1, all series each comprised 6 runs.
The course was very different from the current Corporate Cup course. Run 1 started in the North-Western corner of the Domain, near the Mitchell Library, and followed the path to Art Gallery Road, where runners turned left and ran down to the Domain Baths. You could choose which way to get there, but most runners ran down the grass verge until they reached the baths. Runners ran past Mrs Macquarie’s Chair and then followed the path along Farm Cove, through the Botanic Gardens until they reached the Opera House. There were two options now – most runners ran up the Tarpeian Way steps and along the path adjacent to Macquarie St. to the end of the cast iron fence and turned 180 degrees back down Macquarie St. to the Opera House. Other runners chose to do this section of the run up Macquarie St. to the fence and down the Tarpeian Way Steps. The return to the finish retraced the way back to the starting point. In later series, the run started at the intersection of Hospital Road and Art Gallery Road, near our normal starting point, but the first part of the course was along the Art Gallery Road footpath.
Over the next five years, the early version of the Corporate Cup increased in popularity, involving a lot of work for the handicappers keeping track of times, and manually adjusting handicaps when required. The final series of this original version of the Corporate Cup finished on 5 August 1987.
It appears that the course for this early version of the Corporate Cup was in conflict with the objective of the Botanic Gardens Trust of maintaining the Botanic Gardens Area as a passive recreation area. Michael O’Mara was instrumental in holding discussions with the Trustees and Executives of the Botanic Gardens to develop a new running course within the Domain Trust Area, and this eventually led to the creation of the current Corporate Cup course and competition.
Compiling this brief history of the early Corporate Cup has been possible as a result of contributions received from Ian Graves, Max Powditch, Vic Anderson, Laurie Coleman, Chris Stephenson, Mel Cox, and Michael O’Mara.
At the end of each series of the initial Corporate Cup, blank certificates were given to runners so that they could record their performances made during the series. This is a copy of the Ian Graves’ certificate for the last series in 1987 of the initial Corporate Cup conducted by UTS.
Early Years of the
Current Sydney Corporate Cup
As mentioned in the Pre-Sydney Corporate Cup History, the Trustees and Executives of the Botanic Gardens Trust had the objective of maintaining the Botanic Gardens Area as a passive recreation area. This meant that the Sydney Corporate Cup event could no longer be held inside the Botanic Gardens fenced area.
After the last run of the earlier Sydney Corporate Cup on 5 August 1987, Michael O’Mara called for the inaugural committee of the new Sydney Corporate Cup to be formed from previous participants of the early version of the Corporate Cup and any other interested bodies. This committee met regularly to co-ordinate numerous items, approvals, course layout and legal requirements.
Run 1 of Series 1 was held on 8 June 1988, and results showing the fastest time for each runner in each Series until the end of Series 13 were recorded on paper and provide a valuable source of information for these early Series. We are extremely fortunate that Laurie Coleman kept these records. The Sydney Corporate Cup was formally incorporated on 8 March 1995.
The Mission of the Sydney Corporate Cup was defined as providing a corporate race series open to employees of all companies, businesses, government and financial institutions which encourage participation by runners of all levels of ability for the fostering of company spirit and team work.
The Code of Conduct was prepared with co-ordination of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust. All runners on registration received a copy of the Code of Conduct, so as to be aware of the needs of other users along the course and have an awareness of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust Areas. Runners had to stay on paths and were not allowed to run on the road.
The Course was designed as a challenging run over approximately 6 km. Chris Stephenson was appointed to select the course that involved hills, notably the run down the steps to Lincoln Crescent and back up along the steps and path to Mrs Macquarie’s Road. The original course was different to the course currently used. The start was the same, and the runners followed the existing course to the electricity substation then down the steps to Lincoln Crescent. Running along Lincoln Crescent then up the steps and path to Mrs Macquarie’s Road, runners followed the path parallel to the Cahill Expressway before turning right and retracing the course back to the Domain. They did not turn along a path before the Restaurant, but turned on the path after the Restaurant towards the Mitchell Library. The turn at the fig tree to the path currently being used was the same, but runners continued down this path to Central Avenue, turning right with about 50 metres along Central Avenue to finish. This course was about 5.9 km; slightly shorter than the current course.
Over time, with changes to paths and disruptions by other activities in the Domain and along the harbour foreshore, the course has changed. The first change occurred in 1992, when a new path was constructed between the Restaurant and the Cahill Expressway, so this was used to ease congestion near the Restaurant. Activities in the Domain also caused problems, and a few major changes were implemented, eventuating in runners using our current course in the Domain. Near the halfway point in the section from Lincoln Crescent, instead of running all the way up the path parallel to the Cahill Expressway, the course turned right along the newly constructed path halfway up the steps from Lincoln Crescent. These changes, introduced for Series 33 in 1999 made the current course much closer to 6 km. Adjustments had to be made for cut-off times for fast runners to allow for the extra distance.
Most runners were covered for any injury or accident by Workers’ Compensation as the Sydney Corporate Cup is an organised corporate event.
To enable the run to be effectively organised, a Series Co-ordinator was required for the administration and confirmation of each run for the full series. The Series Co-ordinator had to ensure that all equipment was available and team representatives were available for nominated duties. For these early years, two teams shared recording duties on paper sheets for each team, as each runner nominated which minute they were starting, and at the end of the run they advised the recorder of their finish time rounded to the nearest five seconds. The recorder then calculated the net time and entered this on the team sheet. Runners were to commence their run between 12:10 pm and 1:00 pm and had to finish before 1:30 pm.
A Handicapper was appointed at the Team Captain’s meeting for each series. For Series 1 to 5 the handicappers were Phil Lamond and Steve Harvey from ACTA Shipping. The handicapping was done manually, with similar rules that apply today. It is not known whether there were any adjustments made for “old” runners who had participated in the earlier Corporate Cup prior to Series 1. From 1990, for Series 6 to 15, the handicapping passed to Vic Anderson and Garry Winney from State Audit. At this time a computer program had been developed – it appears that, as described above, the manual system was maintained until the end of Series 13, since we have copies of handwritten sheets showing the fastest times for each runner for Series 1 to Series 13. There was a problem with the program – it was not able to cope with the increasing size of all the records for all runners.
In 1993, for Series 16 onwards, ABS took over the handicapping responsibilities. Paul Bondin, a programmer in ABS, was co-opted into writing an RBase 4 program that could operate with much more data than the previous program. It was a slow program and took about 30 minutes to process the results for each run. As Handicappers, Laurie Coleman and Dennis Jolliffe had to ensure that all the data had been correctly entered into the computer and the calculations between the start and finish times were correct. They were ably assisted by other ABS team members with the data entry, and as the results were produced on paper, these had to be passed on to all Team Captains before the next run. To improve the time taken to process the results, Dennis Jolliffe initially wrote a spreadsheet program using Lotus 123, but it became apparent as spreadsheets evolved, that it was desirable to rewrite the program in Excel. After the data entry for each run had been processed, the program took about three minutes to run to produce all the results for 480 runners for the various tabulations required. It took about 12 months running the Excel program in parallel with the RBase 4 program before all the bugs were ironed out, and eventually we made the switch to Excel. Laurie Coleman kept fit by delivering most of the results by hand to team captains. In 1997, John Angelakis in NSW Treasury took over the Handicapper duties from Series 29 onwards, using the Excel program that had been developed in ABS. John Angelakis was Handicapper, using the Excel program developed by Dennis Jolliffe until 2006, when he passed the handicapping duties over to Mel Cox, who is still the handicapper for the Corporate Cup. Mel created a much faster system to process the results than the Excel Program written by Dennis.
Chairmen in the early years of the Corporate Cup
Michael O’Mara, from NRMA Potholes team, was the driving force in the formation of the Corporate Cup in 1988, and was Chairman from Series 1, starting on 8/06/1988 until the conclusion of Series 12, finishing on 15/04/1992. Michael was replaced for two series by Richard Semeniuk, from API / Dalgety Runners, and Michael Hilder was Chairman from Series 15 on 3 February 1993 until at least Series 24 that finished on 17 April 1996. Max Powditch from Bankers Trust took over as Chairman from Michael Hilder. When Max finished as Chairman, Charles Coville assumed this important position and was Chairman until he in turn handed over to David Le Ban from Telstra.
Competitions held for Series in the Corporate Cup
Over the years that the Corporate Cup has been held, there have been many competitions designed to improve competitive running and participation.
The only competitions that have existed for all series in the Corporate Cup are the Series Pointscore Winning Teams, the Fastest Female Runner in each Series, and the Fastest Male Runner in each Series.
In Series 1, State Audit Team was the top Pointscore team with 885 points, followed closely by Bankers Trust # 1 Team with 879 points. Taxation Harriers were third with 758 points. Because there was only one team competition for the first 7 series, this was a very competitive challenge, with State Audit winning the competition on three occasions and being placed third in another two series. Teams that finished prominently in many of the first three placings up to the end of Series 7 included these three teams, as well as Commonwealth Harriers #1.
In the Fastest Female Runner Series events, Tina Campbell from Sun Alliance won the first 5 competitions, having a fastest time of 23:15. From Series 6 to 8, Marlies Laaper from CABS Pty Ltd was fastest with a best time of 23:30. Then Jane Despas from OTC (Telstra) arrived, and from Series 9 to 13, she dominated the Female runners and had a best time of 22:00. At the end of Series 46, Jane Despas had the fastest time of 21:55.
For the Fastest Male Runner Series events, the competition was keenly contested. Bob Davidson from ABS Moving Averages won the first two competitions with a best time of 19:10. But the following five competitions were won by different runners –
Series 3 Mark Darvodelsky (Sun Alliance) 19:30
Series 4 Mark Causer (Independent Team) 19:10
Series 5 David Lewis (Reserve Bank Midday Milers) 18:50
Series 6 Geoff Large (Bankers Trust # 1) 19:20
Series 7 Jock Davis (Westpac Harriers) 19:35
At the end of Series 49, Damon Harris (Sydney Water Sewer Rats) held the fastest time record of 18:30, having achieved this in Series 23 and 49.
Fastest Team Competition
With all these fast times being recorded, the Corporate Cup Committee decided that from Series 8 onwards, there would be a Fastest Team Competition. At this time no allowance was made to take account of the age of the runners – males had to better 23:45 and females had to better 31:00. This relatively slow “fast time” for females was set so that more women would be encouraged to participate in the Corporate Cup.
BT Warriors in the early years of this competition had a virtual mortgage on the fastest team – in the first 24 series, they won the competition 18 times and were placed second on six occasions.
At this stage it was recognised that an allowance should be made for the older runners who for their age were recording fast times but were finding it difficult to meet the cut-off times that younger runners could achieve. Following a suggestion by Alex Whitworth, it was decided that for males over 50, a fast time of less than 26 minutes would be included as a special category. This was increased to 27 minutes when the course was lengthened in Series 33. Incidentally, when running in the Over 50 age category, Ian Graves in Series 19, Run 4 ran 20.25 and Alex Whitworth ran 21:50 in Series 16, Run 2. Inclusion of the Over 50 Age Category in the Fast Times worked well, but there were still several older runners who were disadvantaged, so Max Powditch as Chairman suggested to Dennis Jolliffe as handicapper that he investigate a fairer solution so that runners of all ages, both female and male be treated equitably in terms of achieving fast runner status. As a result, fastest times age-based cut-off times for runners from 25 to 29, 30 to 34, 40 to 49, and 50 and over were included in the fast runner category from Series 42 onwards. This has subsequently been expanded as many runners have moved into older age groups.
From Series 10 onwards, there were two other competitions incorporated into the Sydney Corporate Cup. At the suggestion of Ken Widdup of ABS Moving Averages, a Team Representation Competition was introduced to encourage runners to compete regularly for their teams. Dalgety Striders won the first Team Representation Competition, but in subsequent series, the competition was hotly contested, with no particular team predominating. Most of the winning team scores ranged between 75 and 84 out of a possible 90. The Versatile Financial Solutions (later Toyota) Knockout Competition was also introduced in Series 10, with Civil Aviation Authority being the first winner. Once again, this was a keenly fought competition, resulting over the years in many different teams being victorious. In Series 23, in the final knockout, only two points separated the winner from the runner-up, contrasting in Series 24 with the difference being 57 points.
In Series 12 The Garry Gould Memorial Trophy for the Top Points Scorer of the Series was introduced. From Series 12 to Series 50, there were 6 runners who scored the maximum of 150 points. This resulted in penalties being introduced to handicaps for runners who achieved very high scores in a series.
In Series 13 The Ron Coombs Memorial Trophy for the Top Points Scorer of the Opposite Sex was also introduced. The winners of this trophy have been predominantly female. Apart from two instances when it was won in Series 38 with 146 points and in Series 49 with 141 points, the scores up to Series 50 were much lower, ranging from 79 to 130 points.
All of these competitions have contributed to the success of the Corporate Cup. It has fulfilled a need for a regular organised running activity in the Sydney CBD that complies with the requirements of the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Domain Trust. There are always teams waiting to join the competition, and if a team is not adequately represented in numbers over a Series, they face the possibility of removal to make way for other teams.
Vic Anderson receiving an award at an end of Series presentation
Ian Graves, Mike Hilder and Max Powditch
Michael O’Mara at an early Series Presentation
Some well-known faces at the start of one of the early runs in the Corporate Cup. Runners started at one minute intervals.