Michael Ridpath: Free To Trade

'I'm sorry, Cash. Thanks for the bid, but I think I would rather keep them.'

'Hey, Paul buddy. Think this through. Hamilton's going to be awful sore with you when he hears you didn't hit my bid.'

And when he finds out I bought two million more, I thought.

'Sorry, Cash, but we can't help you.'

There was silence for a moment. Then Cash's voice came back on the phone, disappointed, but friendly. 'That's your decision. Just remember the trouble I went to to help you out of a bad position. Speak to you later.'

As I put the phone down, I marvelled at Cash's ability to make you feel guilty, even when he was trying to rip you off.

'Did you get any?' Debbie asked.

'Only two million,' I said.

'That's not bad. You should make some decent money out of that.' She sat back in her chair. 'It's a shame we can't buy any of the bonds ourselves,' she said. 'It looks like easy money.'

'Of course you can,' I said. 'All you need to do is take a couple of million out of your building society account.'

'We could try and buy a smaller amount. An odd lot,' she said.

'Would that be ethical?'

'I don't know.'

'Well, you ought to know, you are the compliance officer after all,' I said. Every fund management company appointed a compliance officer to ensure that insider trading and conflicts of interest were avoided. With her legal background, Debbie had become ours.

'I suppose I am.' She paused. 'Thinking about it, it would almost certainly be a conflict of interest.'

'Shame. It's not a bad idea,' I said.

'Of course we could buy the stock,' Debbie said. 'That should move up sharpish if the company is taken over.'

'Why not?' I said, 'Seems like a great idea to me.' I had ten thousand pounds in the building society. It seemed to me that Gypsum shares would be a good place to put half of it. 'But how the hell do you buy American shares?'

Debbie and I mulled over this problem for a minute or two. Then Debbie laughed, 'This is ridiculous! We've got ten lines all plugged in to the biggest stockbrokers in the world. One of them should know!'

'Of course!' I said. 'I'll ring Cash. He's bound to know all about that sort of thing.'

I got through to Cash. 'Changed your mind about the Gypsums?' he asked.

'No, I haven't,' I said. 'But I wonder if you could do me a favour?'

'Sure,' said Cash, perhaps a little less enthusiastically than usual.

'How can I buy some stock on the New York Stock Exchange?'

'Oh, that's easy. I can get an account opened for you here. All you have to do is call Miriam Wall in our private client department. Just give me five minutes and I'll warn her you are coming through.'

Ten minutes later Debbie and I were proud owners of a thousand shares each of Gypsum of America stock bought at a price of $7 per share.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I was in full stride now. My feet were making the lightest of sounds as they touched the pathways of Kensington Gardens. I focused on the Round Pond in the distance, pleased to see that it seemed to remain stationary. When I ran, the world glided by. No movement up or down. My body just moved horizontally forward, driven by the regular strides of my legs. Any jogging, any rolling, meant a loss of energy. And a loss of energy meant a loss of speed.

I enjoyed the discipline of running. Not just the will-power required to force yourself to keep going when your body told you to stop. But the discipline of ensuring that every muscle in your body was moving as it should, when it should.

The commentators had raved about my running style. But I was not a natural. I had learned it through years of single-minded concentration. And through Frank.

I had first come across Frank when I was running at Cambridge. He coached middle-distance running at a club in North London. Occasionally he would come up to Cambridge to coach some of us. More often, I would travel down on Sundays to learn from him.

I certainly had some natural talent. I had enjoyed cross-country running even as an eleven-year-old. I would voluntarily run for miles over the moors at home in Yorkshire, something my friends found very difficult to understand. As I had passed puberty, I had filled out. My leg muscles had grown in size and strength and I had picked up the speed you need to be a good middle-distance runner. At Cambridge, I had thrown myself into athletics and had achieved a blue in my first year.

But it was Frank who had really taught me how to run. Not just in the body, but also in the mind. I had the necessary determination; he knew how to channel it. We worked long and hard at my technique. During speed training, he exhorted me to put 100 per cent into each leg, when my body told me to go 90 per cent. And he taught me how to race, how to ration not just my physical energy but my mental energy as well.

And it worked. It was hard and slow, but every year I ran just that little bit faster. A year after I left Cambridge, I ran for Britain for the first time. The next season I just missed selection for the Olympics. Over the next six years, my speed and consistency improved just enough to win me a place.

That year Frank and I put everything we could into getting me to the peak of my mental and physical fitness. The bank was very understanding, my job became at best part-time.

The heats went well. I managed to run them hard enough to qualify for the final whilst still leaving a lot in reserve.

On the day of the final, I felt as ready as I ever could be. I was fit. I was determined. There were four other runners who had done times faster than me, but I was going to beat them all. My plan was simple. I would start the race fast and lead from the front. There were two or three faster finishers than me. I had to make sure they were beaten by the last hundred metres.

I followed my plan, but for the first six hundred metres most of the field kept up with me. Whenever I drew away, the others would catch up. Then, with two hundred metres to go I lengthened my stride slightly and began slowly to pull away from the others. For a hundred and fifty metres I was running five yards ahead of the best runners in the world. The crowd in the huge Olympic stadium cheered me on – I was convinced they were just cheering me alone. It was the best fifteen seconds of my life.

Then, fifty metres from the line, two green shirts barged past me as a Kenyan and an Irishman battled for the line. I told my legs to move faster, stride longer, but they didn't obey. Suddenly the crowd were cheering for the two backs a yard or two ahead of me, not for me. It was as though I were slowly moving backwards.

I made it over the line in third place and won a bronze medal.

For several months afterwards, I basked in the attention I received. From the media, from people at work, people I met in business, even from people in the street. But despite the euphoria, I could not hide a simple fact from myself. I had lost. I had put everything into that race, a year of my life had been devoted to that one-and-a-half-minute period. And I had lost.

My time was easily my personal best. As I resumed training and racing the next season, my times came nowhere close. It began to depress me. I became more and more sure I would not be able to better that one effort. And it would take all my energy just to get close.

I wanted time for other things. For friends. I wanted a job that would stretch me. I wanted a new challenge.

So I quit.

When I told Frank, I expected him to be furious with me. But he took it very well. In fact, he was very supportive.

'I've seen too many young men sacrifice their lives to athletics,' he said. 'Go out into the world and do something.'

Secretly, I think he knew, as I did, that I had got as far as I was going to go. He didn't want me to lose years of my life aiming for the gold medal which would never come.