Dick Tayler

Perhaps no New Zealander is quite so inextricably linked to one performance as Dick Tayler.

Arriving at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, Tayler has a reputation as a quality athlete but one who had yet to translate that promise on to the big stage.

But on the opening day of the programme at the QEII Stadium he enjoyed the race of his life to claim a thrilling come-from-behind 10,000m gold medal and secure one of New Zealand’s athletics most iconic victories.

Born on a potato farm in South Canterbury, Dick was an active child who every day biked the ten-mile round trip from the family farm to primary school in Temuka.

Yet it was after he started life at Timaru Boys’ High School – the former school of 1936 Olympic 1500m champion Jack Lovelock and 1938 Commonwealth Games 880yd gold medallist Pat Boot – when his sporting journey really began.

His first passion was rugby, where he played on the wing for the first XV, but he was also a gifted runner. At the age of 15, Dick set a world age best time for the mile, recording 4:18 and later secured the 1966 national junior mile title before the following year banking the New Zealand junior 880yd crown.

“As I was a boarder at the school we had to run every day,” he explains. “I was always naturally motivated to get out there and do some exercise and sometimes I sneaked out for a run at night to get more miles under my belt.”

On the encouragement of his father, who wanted Dick to gain experience of working somewhere other than the family farm, in 1968 – at the age of 19 – he moved to Dunedin to take up a role working in the office for a transport company.

It was here he came in contact with Alistair McMurran, an Arthur Lydiard devotee, who quickly put Tayler on a 100-mile per week training regime.

The pair instantly gelled and Tayler thrived in his new environment.

“I enjoyed my time in Dunedin, we had some great hills to run on, there for lot of keen runners at the university and the Harriers were very strong in Otago,” he explains.

“Alistair was a very quiet, unassuming guy but was a huge inspiration. He was a big Lydiard fan and a great advocate of hill training. We did our long run on a Sunday but he always made training enjoyable. He would mix up the training venues, it was never boring.”

Gaining both strength and endurance from the training programme in 1969 he made his New Zealand international debut at the Pacific Conference Games in Tokyo. Competing against the finest North America, Australian and Japanese athlete he grabbed 1500m silver and translated that that form into the 1970 campaign, where he landed a maiden national senior crown over 1500m.

Tayler won selection for the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games in both the 1500m and 5000m but disappointed to finish tenth in both events.

“It was a cool experience to rub shoulders with some of the great distance runners like Ron Clarke and Kip Keino (in Edinburgh), explains Tayler. “Back then the Commonwealths had some of the best athletes in the world. Some people adapt to the occasion and I didn’t. Back then, I probably lacked a bit of confidence and I was a jack of all trades, master of none. I often left some of my best performances on the training track.”

In 1971 he dipped below four minutes for the mile for the first time and also featured as part of an Otago quartet, which broke the 4x800m New Zealand record of 7:27.4 – a mark which still stands today.

The records continued to tumble in 1972 as Dick, running in the same quartet as Dick Quax, Tony Polhill and Kevin Ross, set a world 4 x one mile relay world record of 16:02.8 at Mt Smart Stadium.

“Everything seemed to click that day, I remember Dick (Quax) ran a brilliant sub-four minute mile on the anchor leg,” recalls Dick.

Later that years he won selection in the 5000m for the Munich Olympic Games and went through the full range of emotions on his Olympic debut.

Elated to be in the Olympic bubble alongside the world’s best athletes he later faced a devastating experience when learning of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes in the Black September terrorist atrocities.

“We were right next door to the Israelis in the village and friendly with them,” recalls Dick. “To be talking to them one night and then learning that they were slaughtered the next morning was hard to comprehend.”

On the track, Dick failed to advance from his 5000m heat and admitted he was simply out-classed by the opposition.

Following his Olympic disappointment, coaching guru Arthur Lydiard, a close friend to Alistair McMurran, started to take a more hands on role to Dick’s coaching programme.

Dick first met Lydiard, who was helping Ali set his training programmes, in 1970 and he recalls their first conversation.

“Arthur said, ‘Richard, it will take me a while to put you right but I promise by 1974 I’ll have you spot on. You are the kind of athlete who will take a little bit of time to get right’.

“Thank goodness, I had a little bit of patience,” explains Dick.

With Lydiard taking on a more direct coaching role he cranked up the weekly mileage and improvements could be quickly traced.

In 1973, Dick placed an impressive 12th at the inaugural IAAF (World Athletics) World Cross Country Championships in Waregem, Belgium.

His confidence rising, later that year he went on to secured victory in the New Zealand Cross Country Championships in Christchurch and it was in the wake of this success when Arthur proposed a new training approach, which would act as the catalyst for his future success at the Commonwealth Games. 

“Arthur told me to move to Blenheim and base myself there from August (1973),” explains Dick. “I had relatives I could stay with and he changed my programme from running 100 miles a week to 200, which I could now do because I had the time. He asked me to run the 200 miles but to make sure I gave myself 24 hours rest from running every week. I wondered how I was going to achieve that but after a long run every Sunday, I would not do another run until Monday lunchtime, so I gave myself 24 hours complete rest.”

Arthur wisely selected Blenheim because of the likely hot conditions he would experience, which would be similar to what he would encounter at the Christchurch Commonwealth Games.

“It was the hottest spring ever in Blenheim at that point,” he explains. “But Arthur knew I would be competing at 3.15pm and very likely in the heat for my 10,000m final in Christchurch.”

Hammering out the miles he reduced his naturally bulky frame to trim ten-and-a-half stone. Devoting his time to training, rest and recovery after smashing out long runs of between 25-30 miles on a Sunday, Dick was advised by Arthur to stick a couple of bottle of beer in the fridge and after every long run drink both bottles with his feet in the Wairau River to cool off.

“At first I thought, why would I want to put my feet in an ice-cold river?,” he explains. “But it must have worked because I never picked up any injuries,” he explains.

To further aid his recover and under Lydiard’s direction he ate lots of honey and slept for one to two hours every afternoon. He would also include a weekly 10,000m time trial in training to aid his preparation for Christchurch.

“I’d done so many (10,000m times trials) that by the time I got to the Commonwealth Games running 25 laps was not a big deal,” he adds.

He gradually felt his strength improve. His times tumbled during track sessions and he backed this up by winning the New Zealand 10,000m title in December of 1973 on his first race at the all-new QEII Stadium to secure his place on the team for Christchurch.

Dick won the title in 28:29 after which Arthur once again revealed an uncanny ability to predict the future.

“Arthur said, ‘If you are going to be in the hunt in Christchurch you will have to run 45 seconds quicker’, which I almost did to the second.”

Leading into January he was primed and ready for the Commonwealth Games – which would be the first TV sporting event in New Zealand to be filmed in colour – and he was not lacking in motivated to deliver on the big stage.

“Athletics NZ and my country had supported me in both Edinburgh and Munich when I hadn’t performed and I felt like it was payback and that I owed my country a good performance,” he explains.

With his mum and dad all set to attend the Opening Ceremony at the QE II Stadium, Dick was relishing the prospect of joining his team-mates in the celebration. Yet Arthur, who was fully aware Dick was competing the next day, put a halt to his plans.

“Arthur said, I couldn’t go, but I replied, ‘I have to its compulsory’. He said, ‘sign in on the bus, go to the toilet and don’t come back’. I was gutted to miss out but I can’t be too angry because he was right.”

Dick did as he was told and that night the pair shared three jugs of beer with Arthur spelling out his route to victory. Writing down on a piece of paper the lap times Dick needed to hit – Arthur said he needed to run a 27:45 – which was to prove prescient.

“It was quite strange to think he could tell what would happen before it did,” muses Dick. “He then told me, ‘you are not the greatest athlete in the field tomorrow, but you are the best prepared’.”

Facing a stellar field led by the world record-holder Dave Bedford of England, Dick faced formidable opposition and was by no means the pre-event favourite.

The front-running Bedford burst to the front and rocketed through the first half of the race at world record pace with Dick some 50-60m further back – himself smack on world record pace at 13:45.

“I sensed from hearing my lap times that they were going very quickly up front and at halfway they were on world record pace,” he explains. “I was just concentrating on what I was doing and hitting my lap times. But after halfway all of a sudden I could feel I was gaining on the lead group.”

With around eight laps remaining the crowd noise started to ramp up as they sensed Dick closing. In the final mile, Tayler attached himself to the lead group and suddenly he was in the medal picture.

“Bedford was starting to struggle and David Black (another Englishman) started to push it with three laps to go. I counted down the laps. Arthur told me to go with 300m left and got to Black’s shoulder and sprinted as hard as I could. I went hard, I don’t think Black was expecting it. I then just charged for the line with the crowd carrying me around.”

Crossing the line in 27:46.40 – just over a second outside of Arthur’s prediction – he memorably celebrated by leaping in the air and falling to the ground on his back.

“People thought it was because I was buggered, but it was because I was so excited that I’d won it for my country, the Commonwealth Games selectors and my country,” he says. “It was sheer excitement.”

It was a stunning success for Dick and the first of eight New Zealand track and field medals in a memorable Games. To this day Dick is regularly reminded of this moment, but does he have any theories as to why his victory has been remembered so fondly by the Kiwi public?

“I think it was because it was the first sporting event in colour in New Zealand,” he explains. “Lydiard also got the organisers to put the race on the first day of the track and field programme to help kick off the Games. Snell, Halberg and Walker all achieved far greater performances than I did by winning Olympic title but maybe it was because their successes were achieved in a different time zone and mine was here in New Zealand might also have helped.”

There was also one other lasting legacy of his 10,000m success in Christchurch. From that day on he would never been known as Richard Tayler but Dick Tayler.

“That was Keith Quinn, the TV race commentator’s fault,” explains Dick. “I’d always been Richard but for some reason Keith thought my name was Dick! This really brassed my mother off and it is something I still talk to Keith about today.”

Post-Christchurch and preparing for the Montreal Olympics he enjoyed a successful indoor campaign in the US in 1975 only to then struggle with a series of injury issues. Later that year he was diagnosed with arthritis in both ankles and he was forced to abruptly retire from the sport at the age of 26.

“I had been number one in the world in the 10,000m in 1974 to being crippled with arthritis in bed the following year. It tore me apart. It was very traumatic and it took me a long time to get over. Today I would have seen a clinical psychologist but back then I just had to get on with it.”

Dick later worked as a marketing manager for the Harness Racing Association, a brewing company and also served as President of the Canterbury Rugby Supporters Club.

In 2017 Dick suffered a cardiac arrest and for a period some mental health challenges.

Today he works in the gaming industry and lives close to the beach in the small Otago town of Waikouaiti, with his partner, Brenda, and walks at least an hour every day.

Now aged 71, Dick, who has three children and four grandchildren is still in demand as a popular and humorous public speaker – where his 1974 Commonwealth Games story remains as relevant today as it was some 46 years ago.

“I’m still in disbelief that people are still interested in my story,” he says. “The way people talk about the race, I sometimes wonder whether I wouldn’t have minded being in the stand myself.”

Written by Steve Landells