By David Emery Lillian. A biography of the great Olympic Athlete (First Edition)

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Vivian, meanwhile, also keeps busy looking after the horses and working as a homeopath. However, the couple find time for cultural enrichment outside of work. “We took a sabbatical 18 months ago and went on an amazing trip to spend a month on each of the New Zealand islands driving and walking,” reveals Hemery. Nothing before or since was as enjoyable or memorable as that Camelot decade on the Express with David. And it wasn’t just working at close quarters with such an accomplished journalist, he was just as lively at play as well. He vowed to treat the marathon as an extreme form of interval training: running for 48 seconds, his world record time from Mexico, and then walking for a minute repeatedly for 26 miles and 385 yards, thus taking five-and-half hours. When Hemery first arrived in the US and Smith was looking after him on a bleak, snowy day, he opened the front door when David came down ready to do some work, and said: "The road to Mexico is out there." And he forced him into a run. They were really sure they’d never seen anything like this,” Jill says. “They said our family was extremely unique, and they couldn’t define what type it was. And ultimately, that’s good in one way because they’re being honest. But on the other hand, it was terrifying…It’s alarming if you don’t have something to grasp a hold of.”

Those early editions included more than 200 on-the-whistle match reports from leagues up and down the country. The copy was sometimes filed from the clubhouse bar by the slightly inebriated groundsman, but when it hit the shelves the following morning, you wouldn’t have known it. Jill returned to the Mayo Clinic every summer, and it was always the same. There was nothing doctors could do, and nothing new they could tell her. The constant falling-on-her-face stopped on its own, but it was replaced by a burning sensation in her legs. And while Jill was growing in height like a normal girl, the fat on her arms and legs was vanishing. By the time she was eight, her arms and legs were so skinny that other kids would wrap their fingers around them and ask if her mother fed her at home.

In 2008, Hemery started the charity ‘21st Century Legacy’, under which they run the programme ‘Be the Best you can Be’. As an athlete, she was still improving. She probably would have followed a golden path through several more Olympics, potentially as far as Moscow 1980. Today she may well have been involved at the heart of affairs for London 2012. We met him at the 2020 National Age Group indoor championships where he was watching a few of the youngsters in action with their coach - someone he described as "far more qualified than me." But that’s how he works. In reality, he is more than qualified to help given he helped our very own Sally Gunnell and Australian Debbie Flintoff-King use visualisation to assist their results prior to their Olympic 400m hurdles wins.

As the Melbourne 1956 steeplechase gold medallist turned journalist Chris Brasher put it, "It was Hemery first, the rest nowhere." Coleman, commentating, got the second runner, West Germany's Gerhard Hennige, but he couldn't remember who was third. After leaving the Express, to cap it all he demonstrated entrepreneurial skills in starting up his stable of weekly, specialised sports papers. He made Peter Tozer, a trusty lieutenant from the early days, his deputy and launched Charlie Sale on a stratospheric curve by making him news editor. “David could do every journalistic job in the book – writing, subbing, layout, ideas, motivation, the lot,” says Sale. Evans, Hilary; Gjerde, Arild; Heijmans, Jeroen; Mallon, Bill; etal. "Lillian Board". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020.No matter how heavy the work load, he always found time for everyone. Always made a point of speaking to the reporters, always encouraging them, always big on team spirit, always first to the bar.