Mark Littlewood and Allan Wells
Following the success of our Jenkin’s film Mike and I decided to make another in-depth sports film. This time about a sprinters’ preparation for and participation in the blue-ribbon event, the 100 meters at the Moscow Olympic Games.
Despite Pelicula’s pedigree and vision, already demonstrated at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the established broadcasters still refused to recognize independent film production, so we set out once again, to self-fund ‘No Easy Way’.
My continued work with Occidental Oil and B-CAL meant that Pelicula was able to invest in its own camera equipmentand this was beginning to pay dividends in our inclusive, self-help environment.
We thought Allan Wells had the potential to win a Gold Medal. He trained with his wife Margo, also an internationalathlete, so a family film story beckoned.
After explaining to Allan and Margo the kind of film we had in mind both agreed to let the Pelicula team shadow them for the two years leading up to the 1980 Moscow Olympics. We travelled round the world together, filming training and track events in New Zealand, Australia, the Cote d’Azure and Edinburgh.
During one of Allan’s Training sessions, in the pouring rain at Meadow Bank Stadium Edinburgh, we discussed how best tofilm his explosive start and convey the impression of speed.Allan was also keen to have this on film.
It was agreed that we would position our camera car in the lane next to him but start much further back so that we were up to speed by the time we drew level with him in the starting blocks. He then had to time his start to co-inside with the camera car as it drew alongside. I was sitting in the back of aVolvo estate with a high-speed camera. After a few trial runswe got some remarkable slow motion footage of Well’s exploding from the blocks, every muscle and sinew bulging with maximum effort. We kept level with his sunken cheeks the impression of speed phenomenal.
Once again, our perseverance and hope had got us far, but the lack of external funding was beginning to tell and that wasn’t the only challenge facing us; we still had to get our small teaminto Russia to film the games.
Shortly before Mike and I left for Russia the late David Scott, then Programme Controller at S.T.V. offered us a generous amount of co-production funding. Later, this would have repercussions when the A.C.T.T. shop steward at S.T.V.,refused to broadcast the completed film. This not only shows the attitude of the staff within the established broadcasters towards independent producers, but also their ability to prevent them from earning a living. Channell 4 was not yet invented.
These were dangerous times. The cold war between Brezhnev’s Russia and the West was reaching new heights of tension after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, theIron Curtain still very much in place.
Undeterred, Mike and I set out alone, filled with hope and trepidation to recce Moscow and see if the Russians would let us bring our small Pelicula team into film the 1980 Olympic Games. The Americans had already protested by boycotting the games, along with several other countries, For the same reason Maggie Thatcher put pressure on Wells not to compete, but he ignored her and thereafter refused all media requests for an interview, accept with Pelicula Films.
The Russian security, then ruled by the K.G.B., could copewith teams of officially organized broadcasters, but they were very distrustful of small groups or individuals travelling alone. Both Mike and I were certain that our home phones had been tapped after we applied for visas and were expecting to be thrown into the Lubyanka at any moment.
As it turned out, when we came to film the Games a few months later, the stadium officials couldn’t have been more helpful and in exchange for a typewriter they assured us that we would be given a prime spot from which to film AllanWell’s races.
Much to our delight Well’s won the 100 meter Gold Medaland the 200 meter silver medal. Naturally after these victories he was surrounded by the world’s press, but he and Margopreferred to travel back to the hotel with us.
It was fascinating to be so close to an athlete that has just wonOlympic Gold and Silver. Mike and I both noticed that Wells’s whole demeanor had changed from the tense, tight, determined face we had, for two years become accustomed to,to a calm, serene happiness we’d never seen before – what a priviledge.
Some thought Well’s triumphs in the Olympics were dilutedby the American boycott. However, within 14 days of his Olympic success he accepted an invitation to a showdown meeting with America’s fastest 100 meter athletes, includingCarl Lewis in Koblenz, Germany.
The Americans were expected to win, but Wells beat them all in a speed of 10.19 seconds. His credentials were never questioned again and he remains the last white athlete to win a 100 meter Olympic Gold Medal since
In 2002 Olympic Gold Medal winners Allan Wells and Eric Liddell were the inaugural inductees to the Scottish SportsHall of Fame.
Eric Liddell’s Olympic Gold in the 1924 Paris Olympics, made famous by Lord Puttam’s production ‘Chariots of Fire’will be commemorated at this year’s 2024 Paris Olympics.
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There has only been one other Olympic Gold Medal awarded to a Scot, in track and field, since Liddell’s triumph in Parisand that is the one won by Allan Wells in Moscow, made famous by the Pelicula Films production ‘No Easy Way’,
Allan and Margot Wells continued their successful coaching careers, pausing only to raise their two children, Zoe and Simon
In 2014 they both received Hon. Doctorates of Science from Edinburgh’s Napier University. Napier was also the first placeI studied photography.
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