runner

While she was trying to call the police a runner and another cyclist stopped to say they too had been threatened by the man.

He was a runner, skier and long-distance biker when he was younger, and is in relatively good shape today but for a heart condition and “two bad knees and shoulders.”

Like a marathon runner determined to cross the line, the very last veteran in the march-past had got out of a wheelchair and was helped on to a walking frame, so he could walk upright past the Cenotaph.

A runner with Down's syndrome - who gained a world record at his first marathon in London earlier this year - has become a crowd favourite after taking on New York.

"He had said a few times he'd like to run a marathon, but I really didn't take him seriously," said Ceri, a marathon runner herself.