Track and field historian/statistician made great contribution

World track and field lost one of its great contributors when Italian statistician Roberto Quercetani died in Florence, aged 97 on May 13.

One of the great historians and statisticians of world athletics, Quercetani, or RLQ as he was known, was a founder member of the Association of Track and Field Statisticians, serving as president of that group from 1950-68.

 

He first published his A World History of Track and Field Athletics in 1964, regularly updating it and added other titles all highlighting statistical and historic areas of interest in the sport.

When undertaking research for Conquerors of Time, the story of the great era of mile and 1500m running bounded by the 1932 and 1936 Olympic Games, I arranged to meet with Quercetani while on a European trip to discuss one of the central characters in my story, Luigi Beccali, the winner of the 1500m in Los Angeles in 1932 and bronze medalist in the 1936 classic race in the Berlin Olympics.

He walked into the hotel in which I was staying and said it had been where all the athletes had stayed for a major track meet in the city. 

He explained then that Beccali had been his inspiration to becoming involved in athletics. He carried with him a copy of a special issue of the Italian magazine Il Secolo Illustrato which was devoted to Beccali's career. He thought it might be of help to me, although sadly it was in Italian and I would need to get it translated.

He was surprised when I told him I already had a copy of the magazine, and that it had also been translated for me. It was then that I was able to tell him that Luigi Beccali's son Gene had loaned me a copy after I met with him at his home on New York's Long Island in 2003.

At the same time he was delighted to learn that Gene had been such a fund of information about his father, because there was so little known about Luigi Beccali after he left Italy to live in the United States from 1938. 

Quercetani said that while he had spoken with Beccali when he was awarded an Italian knighthood, Caviliere in 1965, he thought, it was only a brief conversation and there had not been the time to talk about his life beyond Italy. He did tell Quercetani, "I'm too American to Italians and too Italian to Americans."

Quercetani was very supportive of the effort going into the book and highly complimentary when it was published.

Appreciation of Quercetani's achievements by New Zealanders may have been diminished due to Kiwi Peter Heidenstrom establishing himself as a track and field statistician of the highest order in this country.

However, there is no doubting the knowledge and understanding that Quercetani brought to track and field and his history is a must-have source for every event on the track and field programme.

He was a big fan of New Zealand runners, Jack Lovelock, Peter Snell and Murray Halberg especially.

Quercetani was in no doubt of the significance of the 1500m final at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

"The Berlin 1500m is still remembered as a classic in the history over the event, were it only for the tactical skill displayed in it by a man who had keyed himself up for the occasion with unsurpassed precision. This man was Jack Lovelock," he wrote in the 2000 edition of Athletics – A history of modern track and field athletics (1860-2000).

And in my interview with him he said: "The 1936 1500m final was a masterpiece. It was one of the greatest 1500m races in history because it put together three great champions." They were Lovelock, American Glenn Cunningham, and Beccali.

All Blacks pictures worth a thousand words

Black Boots – New Zealand's Rugby Legends, words by Phil Gifford, photographs by Barry Durrant and Morrie Hill, published by Bateman Books.

New Zealand's rugby history has traditionally been well served both in written and visual form and the latest offering Black Boots continues that legacy not only through the photographs of Barry Durrant but also the late Morrie Hill.

Writer Phil Gifford provides the mortar to their brickwork with his knowledgeable and authoritative captions, many of them classic vignettes in their own write (pardon the deliberate pun).

If rugby has changed since that day in 1995 when southern hemisphere rugby administrators bit the bullet and decided their future lay in a professional enterprise, then so too has the coverage.

Demands of commercialism and brands have seen photographic rights tied up and restricted and the sort of pictures included in this selection may never be seen when illustrating the modern era of the game.

The book is also representative of a more evocative, amateur age. 

The choice of Bryan 'Beegee' Williams on the cover stepping his way past a London Counties defender en route to the goalline, was a telling reminder of the frustration that attended Williams and many other backs during their careers. 

Inhibited by the damages caused the game by what was known as 10-man rugby played by New Zealand during the 1950s and for the first half of the 1960s, and as a default mechanism when things got tough in the 1970s, players of the quality of Williams had to wait their time to get a chance to do what they did best, run with the ball.

Williams had suggested a potential change in the All Blacks game on his brilliant tour of South Africa in 1970, a tour on which he set the rugby world alight with his speed, power and sidestep when barely out of his teens.

Yet New Zealand's rugby strategies of the day rarely allowed him the opportunity to show that quality again. That he scored only nine tries in 38 Tests was an indictment of the rugby played and the squandering of talent was all too common in that era.

At the same time, New Zealand produced some winning rugby and photos from both Durrant and Hill provide memories of some significant occasions.

Colin Meads, naturally, appears in many but was there ever a more representative photo of the skills he brought to the game than that from the outstanding 19-0 win over Wales at Lancaster Park in Christchurch? Ball tucked in his left hand, resting on his hip, he is looking to cut inside a defender while right on hand in support is prop Ken Gray with hooker Bruce McLeod behind.

Shots of crowds streaming out of the old Athletic Park after the second Test of the 1956 series with South Africa, are not only representative of the rugby of the era, but they are a snapshot of New Zealand society.

Another shot of a distressed loose forward John Graham being held by local medical men as they try to prevent him going back onto the field in the days when replacements for injuries were not allowed, is a reminder of the arcane practice of that era. 

Nowadays Graham would have been taken away for a head injury assessment and judging by the photograph would not have made it back onto the field. And he would have been replaced.

The concentration of photos are on the respective 1963-64 and 1972-73 tours of Britain, Ireland and France, because the two photographers covered one each of the tours, but there are many others from other years which round out a book which is another telling reminder of the legacy of rugby in New Zealand, but also of an enduring era in the game.