A BOROUGH'S first citizens revealed a hidden sporting past as national champion athletes as they performed official starter duties at a fun run.

Mayor and Mayoress of Blackburn with Darwen John and Sheila Williams were both British Champion athletes.

The Mayor completed the high jump and long jump double at the 1996 British veterans indoor championships while the Mayoress scooped the ladies shot put title.

The Mayor also took the UK veterans high jump title at the Birmingham Indoor Arena in 1999 -- almost exactly 50 years after he won the Blackburn and Liverpool with Cheshire youth titles.

The couple enjoyed a trip back to their athletics roots when they started the sponsored Fun Run at Witton Park, Blackburn, yesterday, in aid of the Mayor's Charity Fund.

Proceeds from the event will go to four of the councillors' favourite charities -- The Samaritans, Victim Support, the Thomas charity and the Churches Together furniture store.

Runners can donate half their sponsorship money to their own nominated cause. The Mayor, who named his athletics hero as runner Roger Bannister, no longer competes after a recent hip replacement but is proud of his achievements.

He said: "There is now a general recognition that life in sport doesn't end when you reach 40.

"Normal people finish when they get to 30-odd but veteran athletics is a growing area and is far more popular than it used to be. Everything in the veterans is more competitive than when you are young because you have more to prove."

Coun Williams attributed his success as a veteran to a lucky vest -- the same one he wore when winning titles as a schoolboy -- and a lifelong natural talent for high jumping.

"Build is a very important factor to being a high jumper," he said. "Nowadays all the high jumpers are like giraffes."

Coun Williams, who was a member of Blackburn Harriers for 56 years, was also a sprinter at county level.

The Mayoress was a PE teacher at Blackburn Girls High School and Witton Park High and coached the town athletics team in the late 1960s.

Her favourite event was the discus and she only took up the shot putt because discus was not an indoor event.

"I didn't particularly like the shot," she said. "I didn't think I would be any good at it but as I'd brought my trainers with me I just went out and did it."

The veterans' championships were the Mayoress's first experience of competing at British level and she said the fitness of her fellow athletes was "mind-boggling".

"It is incredible that people of 90 are doing the pole vault," she said. "There were men tying shoelaces for each other because they couldn't bend down, then they got up to run the mile."

The Fun Run, which began at 1.30pm, included runners and walkers completing any distance around the one-mile track.

The elderly, the unfit and even mothers with prams took part and all runners received a commemorative certificate.