Frank Greenall: Legacy lies in the records

GLORY: Arthur Lydiard (left), Murray Halberg and Peter Snell.PHOTO/FILE

It was good to see a current world class middle distance runner competing at Whanganui's illustrious Cooks Gardens recently - our own Nick Willis.

Willis most notably was 1500 metres silver medallist at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the distance for which he holds the current New Zealand record at a classy 3:29.66. Nick comfortably won the Cooks Gardens mile race in a highly creditable 3:55.5, with two others also breaking the 4 minute mark.

Yet it is salutary to remember that this was still slower than Peter Snell's remarkable achievement at the same venue over half a century earlier - on a grass track - when he stopped the clock at a world record 3:54.4.

Willis has since run faster for the mile - his best being 3:49.83, just outside John Walker's world's first sub 4:50 of 3:49.08, both set in Oslo. But as yet, Willis (or any other New Zealander) still hasn't managed to surpass Snell's best time for the 800m - 1:44.3 set in Christchurch on February 3, 1962, a week after his Whanganui triumph.

Snell's former 1964 world record of 2:16.6 for 1000m is also only a fraction of a second outside the current national record. Salutary to recall, too, that these were times set in what was essentially still an amateur era, for athletes and coaches alike. Given the exponential lowering of records in the professional environment of recent decades, how so that a national record in such a blue riband event as the 800m can endure for more than 50 years?

Underpinning the answer was a homegrown visionary coach - Arthur Leslie Lydiard. From his own comparatively modest achievements (he represented New Zealand in the 1950 Auckland Commonwealth Games marathon), Lydiard developed an interest in what made distance runners tick. With himself as guinea pig, Lydiard developed rigorous training regimes unlike any previously, in the process attracting a stable of local athletes who soon blitzed distance records across the board.

1960 Rome Olympics 5000m gold medalist Murray Halberg was Lydiard's main other star pupil, but the likes of John Davies, Barry Magee, Bill Baillie (still New Zealand record holder for 20,000m), and Jeff Julian provided a formidable line-up.

Like many visionaries, Lydiard was hugely single-minded. His self-belief and tenacity rubbed many up the wrong way, particularly officialdom. His proteges' continued successes eventually swayed most naysayers. But not officialdom.

When five of Lydiard's "boys", including Snell and Halberg, were selected for the 1960 Rome Olympics, their revolutionary coach was considered superfluous to requirements.

Only by an extraordinary public subscription was he able to attend in a private capacity.

Coaching from outside the official camp, he confidently predicted a Snell victory in the 800m even though Snell was a rank outsider. He was similarly confident of Halberg, although Halberg was more favoured.

Before the 800m final, adidas gifted five of the six finalists a pair of their prestigious running shoes. They didn't bother with the New Zealand runner as his prospects were considered nil.

Adidas was then later aghast to see the gold medallist mounting the dais in plain, unbranded shoes. Asked whose make they were, Snell explained to the flabbergasted adidas executives that his coach had personally made them in the shoe factory he was manager of - even adding extra heel cushioning to counter the firmer cinder track. As many other international coaches were soon incorporating Lydiard techniques, so too did adidas adopt the Lydiard innovation for their own track shoes.

Lydiard eventually took his theories and techniques on to the world stage to much acclaim. His triumphs derived from not only huge self-belief in the face of stolid scepticism, but his ability to instill that same self-belief in those he chose to mentor. Arthur Lydiard spotted Snell's natural talent and fired it to extraordinary feats. The full-size bronze statue of Peter Snell at Cooks Gardens is tribute to an extraordinary athlete. Arthur fittingly has a statue too, at Auckland's Ericsson Athletic Track. But his true legacy lies in the records of those he coached that still stand over half a century later.

-Frank Greenall has a master's degree in adult literacy and managed Far North Adult Literacy before moving to Whanganui.