Athletics star’s emotion as local race named in his honour

By Rory McKee

 

ONE of Northern Ireland athletics’ greatest servants has spoken of his pride after a popular local road race was renamed in his honour.

 

The Bangor 10k, which sold out seven weeks ahead of its return on Saturday, September 27, will now be known as the Seaton Classic 10k in recognition of David Seaton’s remarkable 67 years of unbroken involvement in the sport as an athlete, coach, official, administrator, team manager and organiser.

 

In an interview with the Spectator, Seaton, now 80, explained that it came ‘as a complete surprise to me’. 

 

“The chairman of North Down Athletic Club and his wife said they wanted to see me after last year’s 10k and I thought something must have gone wrong with the race.

 

“But they told me that they were naming the race after me and I could hardly believe it. It was very emotional and to tell you the truth I was nearly in tears.”

 

This month’s Seaton Classic 10k will once again host the NI & Ulster 10k Championships, with a total prize fund of more than £3,550 on offer, alongside the usual age-category prizes for male and female runners.

 

The route is fast and flat, starting outside Bangor Castle in Castle Park, sweeping down through the city centre, along the coast past Ballyholme and Groomsport, before a short climb around the 9k mark leads runners to the finish in Ward Park. 

Seaton, a former insurance company worker, first discovered his running talent at school.

 

“I played football to start with but while I was at school at Inst [RBAI], I found that I could run reasonably well.

 

“I won a few things and it just snowballed from there. I always found that very nice people populated the sport and then I got into the administration end of it and was hooked.”

 

Over the decades, he has left an indelible mark on athletics in Northern Ireland. For 30 years he chaired the Cross Country and Road Running Committee, taking pride in serving as Clerk of the Course when Malone hosted the World Cross Country Championships in 1999. He went on to chair Athletics NI from 2006 to 2019 and played a pivotal role in the success of the Belfast City Marathon, first as Race Director and later as Chair.

 

Seaton also represented Northern Ireland at the World Cross Country Championships in Rome (1982), Lisbon (1985) and Warsaw (1987), where he got to rub shoulders with some of the top athletes on the globe at a time when the Kenyan and Ethiopian competitors were starting to emerge as a major force.

 

“Athletics to me is almost a disease,” he remarked. “But those experiences keep you buoyant and they refuel you.”

 

Seaton’s services to athletics were formally recognised in 2000 when he was awarded the MBE.

 

Seaton was keen to pay tribute to his wife of 53 years, Joan, for her unwavering support and loyalty.

 

“I must say that Joan has supported me the whole time and has had to sacrifice a lot so that I could pursue my athletic ambitions. We have been married more than 50 years and our holidays were almost arranged around athletics.

 

“My children, Simon and Jodi, and grandchildren, Casey, Daly and Coco are all runners, I suppose you could say it’s in the Seaton genes a bit.”

 

In his long career, Seaton has seen the sport evolve in many ways.

 

“One of the biggest changes I have noticed is the number of women who are running now.

 

“For the first Belfast Marathon, which I ran in, less than five percent of the entrants were female. Now it’s almost 50-50.

 

“There’s a professionalism now about it which there wasn’t before. In the past, people used to chip in alongside their jobs or take time out of their evenings, whereas now there are a lot of professional people involved.

 

“But the sport of athletics is based on volunteers and I’ve always been a great advocate for volunteers, because it wouldn’t survive without them.”

 

He also praised the role of parkrun in opening the sport to more people.

 

“Parkrun has been particularly good at getting people into the sport. All shapes and sizes are doing it and you’re challenging yourself for personal bests, maybe the first week someone will run 35 minutes and they’ll get down to 34 minutes the next week and feel absolutely tremendous.

 

“That has spawned a lot of new athletics clubs and a greater interest. There’s a lot of very intelligent people who have come into athletics, so clubs are never short of filling roles on their committees.”

 

Seaton continues to dedicate his time to his home club, North Down AC.

 

“I think we’ve around 500 members at North Down and there is something happening every day of the week. Having a good structure is key to clubs being able to get off the ground and we have a very strong structure at North Down. 

 

“The athletics community is very strong in this area and the various clubs complement each other well.”

 

Although no longer running himself, he still takes great satisfaction in coaching and organisation.

 

“Illnesses stopped me running about five years ago, but my athletics interest now is in the organisational end of things. There is nothing that beats running, but this is a close second best.”

 

Away from athletics, Seaton remains a keen football fan, and can be found watching games at both Bangor’s Clandeboye Park and Wilgar Park, home of Dundela FC in his native east Belfast.