The Young Shuffle

Albert Earnest Clifford Young was born in 1922 in Beech Forest, Victoria, Australia. He was a potato farmer who would often round up sheep on foot.

For most of his life he led a simple and quiet existence but in 1983 at the age of 61 he made headlines around the world as the winner of the first Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultra Marathon. The race was 544 miles long and Young ran the full distance in his Wellington boots.

The field was brimming with endurance runners and this unknown local was competing against the best in the world. When asked how he thought he could compete he told them that he often spent three days chasing sheep on his farm.

At the start Young was quickly left behind by the trained professional runners as he loped along in his galoshes.

Common practice over such long distances was to run for 18 hours and then sleep for 6. Not Cliff Young, he ran for 24 hours a day without sleep and eventually won in 5 days 15 hours and 4 minutes, two days faster than the previous record.

By running when the others were sleeping he had managed to reach the finish far ahead of them despite his slower pace. This became known in running circles as the Young Shuffle.