Joseph Laughlin Stewart, b. Alexandria, 22 June 1943; d. 31 May 2025. Clubs: Vale of Leven AAC, Shettleston Harriers. Commonwealth Games medallist pictured above in the aftermath of his 10,000 metres. The great Ron Clarke leaves dejectedly as Lachie is congratulated by England's John Caine.

In 1965 Joseph Laughlin (Lachie) Stewart won his first Scottish title, over 3 miles. The following year, at the age of 23 he won the 10 miles track championship and in so doing set new Scottish national and native records of 48 minutes 44.4 seconds.  Three weeks later, he became the first man in Scotland to break 9 minutes for the steeplechase, running 8:59.0 for another native record. His basic speed on the flat was the main factor in his steeplechasing success, improving to 8:49.4 when finishing runner-up behind English-born John Linaker (8:48.8) in the Scottish Championships with a further improvement to 8:44.8 at London’s White City when third at the AAA Championships behind British internationalists Maurice Herriott and Ernie Pomfret. These runs gained him selection for the Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica where he came 9th in the steeplechase and 12th in the 3 miles.  A year later he recorded 27:39.20 in the AAA Championships in London and also won the Scottish 6 mile championship with another native record of 27:58.2, breaking the Scottish native and all-comers’ records for the distance as well as those for 4 and 5 miles on the way. He passed the intermediate 3 miles in 13:55.6, remarkably the same time with which he won the 3 miles championship the following day. 

He completed the same Scottish title double the following year, adding the 10 miles title for good measure. However these were the days when Britain reigned supreme at distance running and Lachie won only one AAA title in 1968 when he clocked 13:28.4 for 3 miles (a 19-year-old Ian Stewart was third in 13:29.8).  In fact he was the last title holder at the distance before athletics turned metric.  The domestic opposition was fierce with runners like Dave Bedford, Mike Tagg, Tim Johnston, Ron Hill, Dick Taylor, Allan Rushmer et al as well as Ian Stewart and McCafferty all considered world class. 

After his limited success in the steeplechase Stewart concentrated his attention on the 6 miles/10,000 metres with great success. In 1969 he took advantage of an invitation to the World Games in Helsinki in July. Running in an international field he achieved 28:50.0 for a new Scottish record when 29 minutes was a top class British performance and on the verge of European standards. A month later at the AAA Championships at White City Stadium, he again bettered 29 minutes with 28:51.84 in 7th, just one position behind Jim Alder (28:50.56). In Commonwealth Games summer he displayed superb form in the Scottish 10,000 championship in the newly opened Meadowbank Stadium, winning in the world class time of 28:33.4, a championship record that stood for 11 years, with his Shettleston club-mate Dick Wedlock runner-up in 28:42.0. These achievements, together with his great winter performances on road and country on the continent where he was known as ‘El Lachie’ made him one of the favourites for the Games 10,000 race.

July 18th, 1970.  Scotland had had a good day. Bill Sutherland had taken bronze in the 20 miles walk, Ian McCafferty and Peter Stewart were comfortably through to the final of the 1500, and Rosemary Payne was in the process of winning the discus. There was a huge entry of 29 runners, including 14 Africans, in the line up for the 10,000 metres race.  Attention was focused on Ron Clarke (Australian) who had set 17 world records in distance running but was still seeking a gold medal in his fifth major Games appearance.  The talented Australian had been second in the 1962 Commonwealth Games 3 mile race behind Murray Halberg (New Zealand) and again second in both the 3 and 6 mile events of the Kingston Games four years later behind the Kenyans Kip Keino and Naftali Temu respectively.  In the Olympic Games he had been narrowly defeated by Billy Mills (USA) in the 1964 Tokyo 10,000.  In 1968 the rarefied air of high altitude Mexico City again deprived him of a 10,000 gold as, like so many other athletes from sea level, he failed to produce his best form in the oxygen starved conditions.  He had announced his retirement from competition earlier in the summer, with Edinburgh being the scene of his last international championship race. For England there was Dick Taylor, Roger Matthews and John Caine; for Kenya, still emerging as a distance running nation, there was Naftali Temu, the Olympic 10,000 champion from Mexico City two years before, and was also the defending champion, having won the 6 miles at Kingston, Jamaica (but was unfortunately injured), John Ngeno and Philip Ndoo.  Bernie Plain was running for Wales and Derek Graham for Northern Ireland.  And there was Lachie Stewart and Dick Wedlock for Scotland.  For Lachie, as he jogged around at the start his first ever win in the inaugural Scottish Boys’ cross-country in 1958 must have seemed light years away.

At the gun the 29 runners splashed away, running in heavy rain that lasted throughout the entire 25 lap race, thankful no doubt for the synthetic surface for on a shale track they would soon have been covered  in black cinders.  Canada’s Jerome Drayton immediately went into the lead and led for six laps. Graham led a group of twelve runners through half distance in 14:09.2 but dropped back so at 6000 metres there were eleven with a chance. It was not until the end of the 18th lap that Clarke broke up the procession with only Dick Taylor and Lachie Stewart proving capable of following the leader’s increased tempo  With six laps to go Clarke put in a 63.6 effort but did not shake off the two British runners. Meanwhile the 30,000 crowd was forgetting the miserable weather as they saw the Shettleston Harrier in the dark blue vest of Scotland in with a chance of a medal. But of which hue? The vocal support for him increased as each lap unfolded.  The bell sounded. U.K. record holder Dick Taylor buckled under the pressure half way round and dropped back at the back straight.  Stewart stayed on the heels of the leader around the final bend, thinking “Going into the final bend I knew I would win, I had never been beaten in the final 100 yards of any race”.  He started his finishing kick from the start of the home straight and never eased up until he broke the tape 1.6 sec ahead of Clarke who knew his glittering career was not to be crowned with a final gold medal.  The 5' 7", 9st 6lb Shettleston Harrier, small in comparison with the burly Clarke, had covered the second 5,000 in 14.02.6 for a winning time of 28.11.72 and became the first ever Scot to win a gold medal on the track in Games history.  Clarke (28:13.45) accepted his defeat with dignity and charm, bowing out of international competition gracefully, accepting Stewart's complementary words “I am sorry it had to be you I beat, you see you have always been a great idol of mine”.  Clarke had not been aware that Stewart was clinging to him around the final bend. “I thought Lachie had dropped off with a lap to go. I heard the crowd cheering and I thought what a good crowd, they are cheering for me!” Dick Wedlock, the other Scottish representative, finished 13th in 29:09.8. The first 11 of the 27 finishers in the event all bettered the world class time of 29 minutes for the distance, a standard that has remained unbeaten in the ten succeeding 10,000 metres races held in Commonwealth Games up to 2010. Stewart had set a Games, Scottish All-Comers, National and Native record and was the toast of the crowd who roared him home to victory. Indeed he was also the toast of the Games organisers who said afterwards that his win and the resultant surge of national fervour that swept Scotland ensured a complete sell out of athletics tickets for the rest of the week and a considerable surge in ticket sales for all other sports in the Games. His win made him a public figure throughout the country and he later headed many fund-raising and public health ventures including a national “no smoking” campaign in Scotland.

The dreadful wet weather created a problem for referee Jim Morton and his track judges for they were filling in the lap sheets for each runner with pencil on soaking sheets. At the finish it was easy to determine the positions for the three medallists but the soaked sheets were virtually uncheckable. Morton folded the sheets for the exciting 10,000 race in his folder, taking them to his Glasgow home where he tried to dry them out to get the final position for all the race finishers. However he was reduced to putting them carefully on the shelf of his gas oven where he hovered anxiously watching the flames dry out the paper but taking great care to extract them before they burst into flames. Eventually he was able to present the Games authorities with the properly checked and validated results to determine the official results of the 10000 for posterity. 

For many athletes there is one race which with hindsight signifies the peak of their running career.  In the case of Lachie Stewart, his Commonwealth Games race constituted such a moment even though he had many other competitive successes and fast times in future years. The moment for which he will be remembered by the spectators who saw the exciting race and ensured his moment of fame was passed on to future generations of athletic enthusiasts.

Stewart competed in the ill-fated 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.  He made sure of selection for the 10000 in Munich when finishing 2nd in 28:38.31 in the Olympic trial at the AAA Championships behind David Bedford (27:52.44). Though running a time of 28:31.33, his second fastest to date, he did not qualify for the Olympic final. The following year he finished 2nd for Great Britain against East Germany in Leipzig in 28:19.8 and recorded another fast time of 28:40.78 for 5th in the AAA Championships. He achieved selection to defend his title at the 1974 Commonwealth Games at Christchurch but finished down the field in 10th place in 29:22.65.

Lachie Stewart had given much to Scottish athletics and, along with Ian McCafferty, had brought Scottish and British distance running to new heights. Their respective times at the 1970 Commonwealth Games still stand as Scottish native records.  In recent years such is the decline in standards both would have topped the Scottish ranking lists and indeed been prominent in British teams.

With such times, Lachie Stewart was a significant player in British distance running and would dominate Scottish distance running today.  Lachie, however, is less than impressed that his 1970 Commonwealth Games 10000 time is still a native record 50 plus years on. “It’s embarrassing that Scottish records from 1970 still survive”, he says. “I blame the coaches. They focus too much on speed. There’s not enough emphasis on speed endurance.”

Lachie advised his son Glen who carried on the family running tradition, breaking the 4 minute mile barrier and being the leading Scot at 1500 in the early part of his career, before moving up in distance to the 5000 and 10000, at which distances he represented Scotland in the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games. Both Lachie and Glen share the hobby of building model ships. Lachie’s work for over 44 years as a dental mechanic gave him the necessary skills to construct the remarkably detailed scale radio-controlled models of passenger liners, warships and even submerging submarines, the technical problems and design details being solved during his long, training runs.