Annual Cedo Memorial Run
Saturday 21 July
2pm Queens Park

Cedric Sidebottom (1940 - 2003)

BRATS Club Founder and Life Member

Cedrics Early Years

Cedric Edward Hugh Sidebottom, born in NewmarketEngland. He grew up surrounded by the horse racing and greyhound industry.  As a young adult he travelled the world and eventually arrived in Australiain 1966 as a “10 pound pom”.

He was full of zest and boundless energy; he eventually settled at BondiBeach and worked as a local “Postie” for over 20 years.

During the marathon boom of the late 70’s and 80’s Cedric ran (mainly socially) from the Bondi Diggers on the Mon, Wed and Fri evening.  Over the years he coached and mentored many to run the marathon. Cedric was often seen to be leading his band of runners on the different courses around the Bondi and Eastern Suburbs areas.

Cedric completed many marathons himself in under 3hrs, he even won one outright in Sydneymany years ago.

The start of the BRAT Club

In 1985, Cedric felt he had achieved all he could have in his own running career, and so to give others a chance he decided to resurrect the Old Bondi Diggers Running Club, which had died from lack of interest sometime earlier. Cedric’s idea was to run it with regular handicap races.

So he tee’d up a meeting with the Diggers Club president, and before long the running club was established and under-way.   Jock Cavanagh the first club president, and Cedric the ever diligent secretary and event organiser.    Cedric was determined to make the new club work. In one of the first club newsletters he wrote ‘This club is going places, and I don’t mean just up Vaucluse Hill’….

He would organise club races by getting down to the start early, marking out the course, setting up the drink stands, coming back to chalk in the entrants’,    work out handicaps, do the timing and compile the results and produce a club newsletter.  

Slowly the number of competitors grew, as the word spread that this was a well-organised club.   Triathlon was a new sport, so the club decided to organise one, and so held it’s first Triathlon at Neilson Park, it was a huge success.  The turning point for the club came when the “Tama Try’s” a small triathlon group, who had some very talented triathletes but little in the way of organization, came across.

By this time the club had people like “Spot” Anderson, “Chipmunk” Fraser, Geoff Scott and Anthony McKeon, the best triathletes in the land. The club then changed it’s name to the BRAT Club.

It was due to Cedric's hard work and commitment that the club is today one of the largest triathlon clubs in NSW.  The club has now staged over 1,000 events, has won the NSW Club Championships on numerous occasions, and has produced very talented athletes.

Cedric was presented an award by the mayor of Waverly in Oct 2000 for outstanding service in the community.

And Finally on Cedric himself

Sadly, Cedric died of a “brain tumour” in 2003, he was 62 years old.

At Cedric’s funeral, Jock Cavanagh said this in his Eulogy;

“I’ll conclude by saying something that came to my mind only the other day. You may be lucky if you can meet in your lifetime a handful of people you can say are beyond reproach, Cedric was certainly one of those, he was almost saint like in the way he led his life, material things didn’t interest him at all, he was always helping people out in an unobtrusive way. I’m sure I speak for everyone in this church today by saying, that our lives have been enriched by our association with him, he will be sadly missed.”