Manx athletics recently lost an extremely popular figure with the sudden death of Phil Motley.

Involved with running and walking for the best part of 40 years, he enjoyed his most successful period during the early 1990s.

He produced a very impressive time of 1hr 08min 02sec for the Peel to Douglas (War Memorial) run in 1990, but his best year was 1994 when he had a number of very good results.

Phil was fourth in the Northern 10 (58m 12s), seventh in the Isle of Man Marathon (3:00.33), sixth in the Syd Quirk Half-Marathon (1:19.53), fifth in the Western 10 (58.38) and fourth in the IoM Vets 20-miler (2:06.19). He also did a 1:16.36 for the Manx Harriers Open Meeting half-marathon the same year.

A 10km best of 37.51 came on the same NSC course in the 2002 open meeting, completing the Parish Walk a few months later in 21:19.15.

He ran the London Marathon in 2008, but did suffer bad health that required a major operation, curtailing his serious running.

A long-time member of the Isle of Man Veteran Athletes’ Club, Phil took on the joint responsibilities of organising the IoM Marathon and Half-Marathon for several years with Mo Kelly and Tadhg O’Mahony.

Earlier, he played a bit of football (for Braddan AFC) and enjoyed running on the fells, completing the Manx Mountain Marathon on numerous occasions.

Richie Stevenson, chairman of Manx Fell Runners, recently posted a tribute to Phil in which he said: ‘Phil was one of the nicest people you could meet. He was very easy to chat with and had a lovely quiet, dry sense of humour.

‘He and his wife Lisa were marvellous helpers. Goodness knows how many races they stood out in the cold and wet to help us.’