Arthur Lydiard: Master Coach by Garth Gilmour

Author:Garth Gilmour [Garth Gilmour]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781927147405
Publisher: Exisle Publishing
Published: 2011-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

15

the rising sun

SNELL AND HALBERG were invited to run in indoor meets in Japan in 1962 and Arthur went with them and was asked to stay on to help the Japanese with their distance training programmes. His interpreter for his subsequent lecture tour through the country was Professor Takanaka, who spoke very good English. He and Arthur have been friends ever since.

‘The Japanese were great hosts and generous with gifts – and after a while I got used to sitting with my legs crossed and not getting cramp. Murray, who was never very supple, had to sit sideways with his legs out straight.’

That wasn’t the worst thing that happened to Murray. Part of the early hospitality before the boys raced was a visit to a bath-house, where, before the attendant could stop him, Halberg put his foot into the bath, not realising the water was boiling hot. His foot came up in a mass of blisters and when he pulled his running shoe on the next day, the blisters bulged over the sides. It must have been total agony, but Murray had known severe pain before and he showed what a tough little guy he was by winning his race. Snell, without blisters, also won.

‘I went out one day to teach the Japanese my system of hill training,’ Arthur recalls. ‘We went out into the countryside with a bunch of their runners and we were all standing round, with no dressing room or any other privacy. I had no alternative but to strip off and get into my running gear on the roadway in front of all these interested people. But it was a beautiful setting for our training. All the hills were terraced and covered with fruit trees. I sent the runners off up one of the hills, yelling at them to keep going and not to stop. When they came down, I said, “Okay, now do it again.” Their jaws dropped. They didn’t think I could be so hard on them. But they did it.

‘In our last week in Japan, we went to an island, Oshima, off the coast at Atima. It was a beautiful island with an active volcano in its centre and we ran the 20 miles round its coastline for training. The island had no electricity, so the residents kept charcoal fires going all night under covers and took the covers off and stirred the fires back into life first thing in the morning, brewing a pot of green tea on top. While we were running round the coast, I spotted a track leading in towards the middle of the island. We were told it was used by students who had failed their exams and went in there to kill themselves in the crater’s molten lava. Well, that’s what they told us.

‘On our last night, we had a question and answer session, during which one stern-faced athlete asked, “Coach, I am a married man – what about sex, satisfying my wife?” I said, “Well, let’s put it this way.

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