`Farrell's Nick Costes was last local Olympian in '56`

By Jeff Greenburg
Herald Assistant Sports Editor

According to Farrell native Nick Costes, many of his Farrell High classmates in the early 1940s used to think he was a bit crazy.

You see, Costes would run five miles at lunch time almost daily during school hours. Nothing wrong with that, except Costes did it in street clothes and then would return to class dripping from head-to-toe with dank, smelly sweat.

If only his classmates had known _ had known what would become of this diminutive, fleet-footed youngster _ perhaps they would have looked upon his daily routine a bit differently.

The community certainly did more than a decade later when Costes became one of the nation's premier marathoners and garnered a spot on the U.S. Olympic Team that competed in the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia.

``They all thought I was crazy,'' recollected Costes recently in a phone interview from his home in Troy, Ala.

In some ways maybe he was. But Costes, who will turn 70 Aug. 3, couldn't be blamed for his lunchtime forays around the Farrell track. Because of the war, there was no track team.

Nick Costes, coach of the Troy State University cross-country team,
gets together with his runners in this photo from the 1957 season

A more conventional training process, one that led to his berth on the U.S. Olympic team as one of the nation's best long-distance runners, began in 1948 at Slippery Rock Teachers College.

It didn't take Costes long to begin making a mark on the running world, which was a far different animal than the one that exists today.

He won the Tri-State Small College cross country title in Pittsburgh in 1949 and after being drafted a second time for the Korean War _ the first time came at the end of World War II _ Costes was the U.S. Army European 10K champion.

Despite appearances, Costes, who hasn't been to the Shenango Valley since 1958, would be the first to say he ``had no special gift for running.''

``I got some very lucky breaks,'' Costes said.

The biggest of which was getting the opportunity to train under 1952 Olympic 1,500-meter champion Josy Barthel of Luxembourg while working on his Masters Degree at Boston University following his discharge from the service.

``I had the great fortune of training with Barthel when he came to Harvard,'' Costes said. ``I was one of a lucky few to be able to train with him. Barthel showed me method and patience and that's what made me a world-class runner.

``Sure, when I start something I finish it and I'm willing to do hard work, but that wasn't enough. It's intelligent work that counts.''

And it was that intelligent work, spurred by Barthel, that enabled Costes, a marathoning novice in 1954, to transform himself into a world-class marathoner less than a year later.

``It took only one year of intelligent training,'' Costes recalled. ``Everybody else in this country was using the old system of long, slow running to train. I tried the new system. I did sprints after long warmups.''

That system, which Costes modified from what he had learned from Barthel, was perhaps the key to his success.

Imagine area basketball coaches such as Ed McCluskey of Farrell and Fran Webster of Hickory or football coach Tony Mason of Brookfield and the coaching philosophies that put them ahead of their time, enabling them to be very successful in their endeavors. It was no different for Costes.

``I trained twice a day, seven miles easy in the morning and a 6-mile warmup in the evening,'' Costes said. ``Then I would do sprints _ 110s, 220s, 440s _ in and out, over and over _ and nobody else was doing that.

``When I ran the marathon I felt like I was walking. I was going easy because the pace was so slow compared to what I was doing in training. I was training like a miler, but over longer distances. The training wasn't as fast as a miler's, but it was much, much faster than a marathoner's.''

That philosophy eventually became known as Interval Training, which Costes wrote about in 1972 in Runner's World Magazine.

``After I broke through no marathoner went back to the old system,'' Costes said. ``And world records fell like tenpins.''

As did competitors in Costes' way.

He won consecutive New England AAU 10K cross country championships from 1953-55 and then broke through nationally in 1954 by claiming the 25K national championship in Pittsburgh.

Costes' meteoric rise continued the following year when he won the national marathon championship in Yonkers, N.Y. He went on to set an American record of 2 hours, 19 minutes, 57 seconds by placing third in the 1955 Boston Marathon.

Costes established himself as a legitimate Olympic medal threat at the 1956 Boston Marathon placing fourth overall (second American) in 2:18:01. The first four runners broke the old Boston Marathon record in that race.

The '55 Yonkers and '56 Boston marathons were used as the U.S. Olympic Trials and runners had to place in the top three in both races to make the U.S. Team. So after Boston, Costes knew he had made it.

The Olympic berth enabled Costes to join Masury's Joe Organ _ a 7th-place finisher in the marathon at the 1920 Games in Brussels _ as the county-area's only participants in the 100-year history of the modern Olympiad. (After this interview, Hermitage archer Rod White qualified for the 1996 Olympics, upping that exclusive list to three.)

``John Kelley and I were considered the favorites and I knew I was going to make it,'' Costes recalled with no trace of cockiness, but with the expected confidence of a world-class athlete. ``There was no euphoria. It was just like another day. Because I had worked so hard it almost came naturally. I wasn't overconfident, but I expected it.''

What Costes hadn't expected, however, was a reoccurence of hemorrhoids, which he had first contracted when he was five or six.

``Right after the 1955 Boston Marathon, the hemorrhoidal veins ruptured and I was losing blood _ almost twice a day _ for a year,'' Costes recalled with a twinge of anger and regret. ``I should have had an operation, but I didn't have it until 1957. I lost some big, big places because of these G---d hemorrhoids.''

Costes believes that even included the Olympics, where he finished what he considered a disappointing 20th out of more than 200 entrants.

``I came back (to the Shenango Valley) like a thief in the night,'' Costes said. ``I didn't want any reception. I was demoralized because of my condition. I believe I could have gotten a medal, at least a second or third. Everything was going good until about a year before Olympics, then it started to nosedive.''

Another factor that affected all the runners, including French-African Alain Mimoun, the 1956 Olympic marathon champion in a relatively slow 2:25:00, was the weather.

``It was a disaster,'' Costes recalled. ``Australia had its coldest spring ever. The temperature never went above 45 degrees. Then the day of the marathon it went up to 80. That's what killed everybody.''

Including legendary Olympic champion Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia, who was also slightly injured entering the race and placed sixth.

Mimoun, who had finished second behind Zatopek in the 1952 Games, was clearly the favorite because of Zatopek's injury, according to Costes. So it was no surprise when he won.

An interesting and unsual sidelight occurred for Costes, who was asked by The Herald to log a daily journal for about a two-month period before and after the '56 Olympics.

``My purpose was to promote the Olympics and to let the people of Farrell know that there was something else besides basketball,'' Costes said with a hint of laughter in his voice. ``I enjoyed it thouroughly. I wrote just as I felt and with total honesty.''

It also led to an extensive writing career for Costes, a teacher at Farrell in 1956-57 who received his bachelors degree from Slippery Rock in 1950 and his Masters of Education in 1954 from B.U.

``I write almost weekly articles now in the local paper here,'' he said. ``I do it with the idea of making a contribution.''

Costes's prolific writing abilities also led him to record a daily diary of his running exploits for nearly 40 years.

``I began a training diary four years after I began competing in September, 1952,'' he said. ``I have 14 bound volumes, with details of every workout.''

But following what he termed a ``mild mid-life crisis,'' Costes eventually stopped producing the diary in December, 1991.

``The reason I quit the diary was I was running with the idea that I had to make an honest effort everyday to placate the dictates of the diary,'' he remembered. ``I created a Frankenstein with that diary.

``Now I run like an innocent child with no goals. And I enjoy running now more than ever before. I have no method, I go anywhere I want and I try to enjoy nature.''

Following his year at Farrell, Costes became head cross country and track coach at Troy State University in his present home of Troy, Ala. He ran those programs from 1957-69 and was a professor in the school's Health, Physical Education and Recreation Department.

Among his professional accomplishments, Costes was inducted into the Road Runners Club of America Hall of Fame in 1986, he received the organization's Rod Steele Award in 1975 and served as an RCCA vice-president for three years.

Costes and his former wife, Danice, have a daughter, Pam Harris, who resides in Lexington, Ky. with her husband and 1-year-old daughter.

Pam was an outstanding runner in her own right, winning the state indoor mile in Alabama and the Road Runners Club Association state championship in the 15 kilometers.

ALSO: Some Olympic memories of 1956 U.S. Olympic marathoner and Farrell native Nick Costes

Back to TOP // Back to Herald OLYMPICS '96 page // Back to Herald HOME page
Updated July 18, 1996