Olympian and former world recorder holder Steve Cram provided motivation and anecdotes when he was a guest speaker at an Allied Dunbar conference.

Mr Cram held his audience spellbound as he talked about some of the feats he accomplished during his successful career as a middle distance runner for his country.

He was invited to speak to a group of Allied Dunbar franchisees who had travelled to Swindon for a Masterclass to learn about motivation.

After listening to other successful franchisees talk about their own businesses and how they achieved success, Mr Cram talked to the group about how to apply motivation to all aspects of life.

As a leading figure in the world of athletics during the eighties, Mr Cram seemed to be the perfect choice to deliver a speech on motivation and how to be successful.

Starting his presentation with a short video showing some of his successes and failures Mr Cram talked about how he would get the motivation to go out on to the track to break world records and beat other great runners like Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe.

"The motivation for me to get out every night and get up every morning and go to the athletics club to run four or five times a week came from the goals I wanted to achieve," he said.

"I wanted to run in the Olympics and break world records."

He also admitted that he hated training and did not particularly enjoy running.

"After I quit my last race, I did not run for a whole year and I only ran again because after a year I was starting to get a bit podgy."

As well as leaving the audience suitably motivated, Mr Cram left them with anecdotes about his fellow athletes, including the time he asked triple jumper Jonathan Edwards why he was performing so badly prior to winning a gold medal in Sydney this year.

"I told him, all he has to do is hop, skip and jump surely it's not that difficult."