The sepia lithograph in the National Library was irresistible to the novelist in Robert Drewe. Painted in 1866, a tiny boy in red shorts leans against a milestone on a winding English country road. On the milestone is a winner’s sash. John Day was the “Child Phenomenon from Australia”.
He was 10 years old, weighed four stone and was undefeated juvenile world champion in the wildly popular 19th century spectator sport of “pedestrianism”: gruelling long-distance competitive walking. “He was the youngest world champion ever,” recalls Drewe.
