Best known for his 2,200-mile run from the Great Wall of China near Beijing to Guangzhou in 1984, Georgia athlete Stan Cottrell, age 64, keeps on running, using his extraordinary capability as a means of creating friendships across the world.
Since he won his first race at a country fair in Kentucky when he was 12 years old, he has logged more than 185,000 miles or enough miles to circle the globe more than seven times.
Mr. Cottrell is preparing to repeat his China run at the Great Wall, beginning on Oct. 20 and lasting for some 60 days.
He even hopes that Gov. Sonny Perdue will join him for the first 100 meters of the run since the governor is expected to be in Beijing at that time. “It’s all downhill at the start,” he said jokingly during a filmed interview with GlobalAtlanta.
Once again, as he did following the 1984 China run, the Tucker resident will follow up with a San Francisco to Washington relay-style run that will include U.S. and Chinese runners. This portion of the Great China-USA Friendship Run is to take place May 7-June 20, 2008.
But this time there will be a difference: Mr. Cottrell’s Friendship Sports Association is coordinating a massive penpal program that will distribute letters from U.S. schoolchildren to curious Chinese schoolchildren along the China route of the Great China-USA Friendship Run.
Letters from Chinese schoolchildren will then be distributed on the U.S. portion of the course.
The association will begin collecting 1 million letters from the U.S. students in August 2007. “We are creating bridges of understanding,” Mr. Cottrell said. “Running is a great form of breaking down walls of division between peoples of different cultures.”
His mission is to create “children-to-children diplomacy” that, once established through the letter writing campaign, will be extended via the Internet and specialized publications.
Mr. Cottrell launched the penpal program when the Friendship Sports Association collected 30,000 letters from Georgia school children that were distributed to schoolchildren during his run from East Berlin in then-East Germany to Warsaw, Poland, in 1990.
This time he also is getting more support from prestigious groups such as the White House Fellows, a program that provides internships for outstanding young professionals in the U.S. government.
Mr. Cottrell likes to quote a Chinese proverb that he has heard repeatedly on his more than 70 visits to China. “If you give me one hair of a great ox, we will give you a herd in return,” he said. “The Chinese never forget.”
Companies that sponsor his non-profit Friendship Sports Association’s efforts will have an exposure in China that would be difficult to match, he said. “This is an opportunity to meet people in a unique way. By endorsing friendship, since they believe in friendship as well, they will be more open to getting into a long-term relationship.”
Aside from his ultra-distance runs across China, North America and Europe, he has completed courses in Bulgaria, Cambodia, Crimea, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Vietnam.
Story Contacts, Links and Related Stories
Friendship Sports Association – Stan Cottrell (404) 574-9713
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