Arthur Lydiard

Lauded as one of the top 20 New Zealanders of the last century by the New Zealand Herald and the Greatest Coach of the 20th Century by Runner’s World – no individual in the history of New Zealand athletics boasts quite the same far-reaching legacy as Arthur Leslie Lydiard.

A coaching revolutionary who transformed the training template of distance running success, he guided Sir Murray Halberg and Sir Peter Snell to a total of four Olympic gold medals during a glittering era of success for New Zealand before his principles acted as the guiding light for New Zealand’s next wave of Olympic medallists in the 1970s.

Yet Lydiard’s methodology was far wider in scope than the coaching of elite athletes, and even today millions of recreational runners from all corners of the planet adopt his training principles in pursuit of their own individual goals.

Born in Auckland in 1917, Arthur was educated at Mt Albert Grammar School and later trained as a shoemaker. ...