David Weir’s marathon dream ended by puncture as Johnboy Smith wins gold

David Weir has won just about everything in his 22-year career: eight London Marathons, six world championship titles, six Paralympic gold medals, but never a Commonwealth Games marathon. He has one Commonwealth medal, a gold in the 1500m at Glasgow in 2014 and was hellbent on winning a second to go with it. He is 43 and knew this might be his last chance to do it.

Seventy minutes into the race, it became clear he was going to. Weir had a 90-second lead over the field, with six miles or so to go. And that’s when his wheelchair’s left tyre burst.

“Oh no,” he said as he slowed and drifted over to the side of the road. Soon after his teammate, Johnboy Smith, had passed him. Smith, 32, called out to ask Weir what had happened and swore out loud when he found out. “I didn’t want to win by default,” Smith said.

He fancied he could catch Weir, and was annoyed that he had been robbed of the chance to make a race of it. Behind him, Weir ended up coming in seventh, 24 minutes after Smith. He got a hell of an ovation when he finished. “Where I come from,” he said, “you don’t give up.”

Weir wasn’t sure how it happened, he hadn’t hit anything and they were new tyres, too. He was left cursing himself. He never carries spares, worried it would be a jinx. “But the last few weeks I just had this gut feeling that something like this would happen. I even told my wife that I might take a spare with me, I brought the C02 canisters and everything, and all week I was asking myself: ‘should I take it?’”

On the start line, Weir said, he was still looking in his kitbag asking himself whether or not to take the equipment with him. He decided not to. “I should have gone with my gut.”

He was convinced that he had enough of a lead to make the