Athletics: Lorraine Moller still feeling the force

Lorraine Moller. Phil Walter / Getty Images

It is almost impossible to tell the Lorraine Moller life story without mention of her legendary coach and mentor Arthur Lydiard - and now Moller is bringing Lydiard's techniques to colleges across the United States.

Now 50, Moller, like many of Lydiard's devoted students, attributes her lifetime of running success to his innovative coaching. Moller was a secondary student when she met Lydiard through middle-distance runner John Davies. When she was introduced to his now legendary methods as a 15-year-old she never looked back.

"Arthur was like Yoda - what he said was always said with such conviction that you believed him and his ways 100 per cent. He was so vitriolic when you didn't listen."

Such was the impact that Moller, in her retirement, has become a Lydiard prophet in the United States. Lydiard is famous for his revolutionary thinking that developed an athlete's aerobic endurance in order to increase speed - a concept which seemed like a misnomer. But it was this out-of-the-ordinary concept that laid the path to glory for his many talented students.

"And they [Americans] still don't get it," said Moller. "They are still so engrossed in their interval training."

That has motivated Moller and her long-time Japanese friend 'Nobby' Hashizume, a "Lydiard zealot", to implement the great coach's methods into colleges right across America. Their project is still in development but has financial backing and Moller is confident that they are well on their way to introducing the Lydiard way to the up-and-coming runners of the United States early in 2006.

One of Moller's biggest concerns in beginning the running clinics was guarding against misrepresenting Lydiard's techniques. So both Hashizume and she have created a coaching team who know Lydiard's methods intimately.

"The whole time we keep referring to the founding principles because there are a lot of people that say they are training Arthur's way but they're actually not."

Moller recollects that Lydiard would always tell his most famous proteges - Peter Snell, Murray Halberg and Dick Quax - that they were the best in the world and they believed him. She began her career in an era where New Zealand were world leaders in running and, as a result, never doubted her ability to foot it with the best.

Sadly, she said, that is not the case anymore. She believes New Zealand's aspiring athletes are struggling without the mentors of yesteryear passing on their knowledge and experience.

"Running [in New Zealand] got left behind by being so entrenched in the amateur code and the world was moving ahead and now it is suffering. They have been a bit sleepy."

Moller was disappointed when she was never approached by New Zealand Athletics to talk to the new breed of runners coming through the ranks. While the golden days of New Zealand athletics might be in the past and current talent like Nick Willis and Adrian Blincoe spend most of the year abroad, Moller is adamant that home-grown Kiwi talent can still beat the world's best.

"It was never a matter of funding, people bandy about all sorts of solutions. We have the talent - it is a matter of creating the right environment again for them to excel and mentors are a big part of that."

Moller has always been a driven, determined individual. When she sprinted on to the international running scene as a barefooted 17-year-old she was sure that she was going to be around for a while. She was right. Her running career lasted another 28 years and included three bronze medals at the Commonwealth Games in middle-distance running and her career highlight - a bronze in the marathon at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

Long-distance running was where Moller excelled - she is the only woman to have run four marathons at the Olympics - and remains the oldest female medallist, at 37.

She shrugs off the tag of being something of a legend and it doesn't fit her amicable, down-to-earth persona. "You mellow as you get older and your ego takes a little more of a rest," jokes Moller. "I look back and say 'I was there, I did that'. I feel I took part in a bit of history and helped break several barriers that were stopping women's athletics - it was a great time."

Moller was the first woman that Lydiard coached and has now spent the past 26 years in the States. She is involved in coaching and inspirational speaking and is also the Vice President of Hearts of Gold, a charitable organisation that raises money through running events in Japan, Cambodia and Mongolia.

Moller is also in the process of collaborating her book, On the Wings of Mercury, named after the Roman God, the "original runner" with winged feet. She still runs herself, three-four times a week around her Colorado home.

The joy of her life now, along with husband Harlan Smith, is her five-year-old daughter Jasmine.

"I thought she'd be the only thing that could fulfil me as much as running - and she has."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY