Vale Sir Peter Snell - New Zealand's Sportsperson of the 20th Century

It is a measure of the impact Sir Peter Snell made on the athletics world that the world record he set for 800m, on a grass track at the now-defunct Lancaster Park in Christchurch, remains the New Zealand record 57 years later.

On February 3, 1962, Snell ran a time of 1m 44.3s for the 800m and while at it, he also broke the world half-mile record. This a week after breaking the world mile record at Cook's Gardens in Wanganui with his time of 3m 54.4s, the first four-minute mile run on New Zealand soil.

That was Peter Snell, a strong, powerful runner whose sustained speed allowed him to dominate middle distance running during the first five years of the 1960s. 

Based on the Arthur Lydiard mileage he put into his legs, he had the strength to achieve success in clusters: his three world records in a week in 1962, his Empire Games gold medals in the half-mile and mile at Perth later that same year and his two Olympic gold medals in the 800m and 1500m at Tokyo in 1964, followed soon after back in Auckland by another world mile record of 3m 54.1s and the world 1000m record.

On top of that, he several times visited the United States to take on their best runners in traditional track running and on boards on the indoor circuit.

Snell, as time has shown, was a phenomenon achieving success like very few individual sportspeople from New Zealand have managed.

Yet, at the same time, he was his own man. His disputes with Lydiard, when they had differences of opinion, were a demonstration of that although Snell remained a Lydiard disciple throughout his life.

He was concerned during his competitive years that he hadn't made the best of his schooling and that drove his later commitment to academia and the PhD he achieved in future years. That involved moving off shore but he retained a connection with the country and his achievements were acknowledged in various sports facilities named after him and with suitable bronze statues created.

He was judged New Zealand's Sportsperson of the 20^th Century and there was never any dispute that he deserved the honour.

That can be measured in the fact that his Tokyo Olympic double success has never been repeated.

From an era before the modern massive media attention that makes even ordinary sportspeople household names, Snell was a genuine sporting hero. Others had high profiles like Sir Murray Halberg, Sir Colin Meads, Sir Brian Lochore, Sir Wilson Whineray and a horse named Cardigan Bay, but Sir Peter Snell enjoyed the highest-profile of all.

His impact and achievements in his area of expertise may never be repeated.

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.

Norman Harris, one of New Zealand's great sportswriters

Sad to learn today of the death of New Zealand-born athletics writer Norman Harris.

Harris, 75, recorded the heady days of the Peter Snell-Murray Halberg era of New Zealand athletics' golden years in a level of sportswriting that has seldom been matched.

He emigrated to Britain in the late-1960s and worked for The Sunday Times.

During his time in New Zealand he contributed a significant collection of books on athletics.

Two of his earliest efforts were: Lap of Honour (published 1963), recording some of the less well known feats of athletics involving New Zealanders, and The Legend of Lovelock (1964), the first published biography of New Zealand's first Olympic Games athletics gold medalist, Jack Lovelock

It was in Lap of Honour that athletes like miler Randolph Rose from the 1920s, Bill Savidan, the winner of a thrilling six miles at the first Empire Games in 1930, and the three-mile/six-mile double winner at the third Empire Games in Sydney, Cecil Matthews, were brought to life for a new generation of sports fans who may never otherwise have known of the feats of these athletes.

But the list didn't stop there: Stan Lay's javelin throwing, Doreen Lumley's sprinting and Doug Harris' half-mile running were described.

And the Olympic Games feats of Lovelock, long jumper extraordinaire Yvette Williams and road walker Norman Read are also feature along with the products of the Lydiard school of middle and distance running that Harris knew so intimately: Halberg, Snell, Ray Puckett and Barry Magee.

The Legend of Lovelock made use of Lovelock's extensive diaries and scrapbooks at Timaru Boys' High School and added to the rich literature surrounding New Zealand's athletics champions.

Along the way he found time to produce some superb booklets which outlined more achievements of other Empire and Olympic Games competitors. These were the Silver Fern series: Silver Fern in Perth (1962), Silver Fern in Tokyo (1964), Silver Fern in Europe (1965) and Silver Fern in Kingston (1966). A record of the 1963 season was described as a New Zealand Athletics Almanack but it was really Silver Fern in 1963 in literary drag.

Of these publications it is not only track and field that is described but cycling, weight-lifting, fencing, rowing at al.

In his Kingston British Empire and Commonwealth Games effort, his description of Peter Welsh's brilliant win in the 3000m steeplechase still stacks up. What a shame film no longer seems to be available of this race. It was one of the classics when a medical student from Otago University took on the guns of the distance and blew them apart in the greatest race of his career.

 

Harris also described the success of the forgotten miler, the man who gets left off all the lists of New Zealanders to have succeeded in middle-distance events, Ian Studd, the bronze medalist in the mile in Jamaica.

His Silver Fern in Europe is notable for the way in which he recorded the decline of Snell who suffered a series of defeats that eventually led to his retirement. But there was also a superb description of a race involving the man he would eventually make the subject of a full book, Neville Scott, the alcoholic three-mile runner who never achieved the sort of fame that could have been his.

Harris also combined with legendary Australian distance runner Ron Clarke to write The Lonely Breed which took the Lap of Honour approach and applied it to world athletics. His description of the Modesto clash between Snell and American upstart Jim Beatty in 1963 is another fine example of Harris' abilities.

But athletics was not his only forte.

He wrote books about soccer's Charlton Brothers, Bobby and Jack, and also about New Zealanders who had made it overseas in The Fly Away People. He also wrote cricket and a small paperback, Cricket's Greatest Matches was one effort, and a description of the Johannesburg Test match involving the famous Boxing Day/Tangiwai train disaster story of Bob Blair was another recent book.

He latterly returned to his New Zealand origins to write Beyond Cook's Gardens, the scene of Peter Snell's first four-minute mile on New Zealand soil, which also happened to break Herb Elliott's world record of 3min54.5s.

And amongst it all was a tale of his own efforts to make it, firstly as a runner, only to be cut down by an Achilles tendon snap, and then his bid to make it is a cyclist, in his Champion of Nothing.

There is no doubt that Norman Harris was the greatest single influence in my becoming so involved in sports history, and sports writing. We did meet, a few summers back, courtesy of Dr Graeme Woodfield, the writer of Jack Lovelock, Athlete and Doctor. It was nice to be able to thank him for the role he played in helping me choose an immensely satisfying career.

May future generations of young sports fans be similarly fortunate in finding such positive direction in pursuit of their interests.

Vale Norman Harris.

Sir Peter Snell recalls his Tokyo double 50 years on

Sir Peter Snell was clearly an athletics freak, yet it can only be wondered what might have been missed had he not been inclined to check out what Arthur Lydiard had to offer as a coach.

Fifty years on from his finest expression of his abilities on the track in Tokyo at the 1964 Olympic Games, Peter Snell's feat in winning the 800m-1500m double has never been repeated by a male.

Clearly the most dominant middle-distance runner of his era, Snell achieved at a level that can only be admired, all the moreso with the passage of time. That the 800m world record he set, on grass, at Christchurch's Lancaster Park in 1962 still stands as New Zealand's best time over the distance is testimony enough to his class.

There were many other aspects of his career that demand admiration.

But it is his moves after competing in Tokyo, and then coming home to set two more world records at meetings in Auckland in November 1964, that provide a demonstration of his drive.

His subsequent move to study in the United States, and his achieving a doctorate in exercise physiology is just as inspiring in demonstrating that in spite of not making the most of his ability in academic terms in his youth, he was able to achieve subsequently.

It was no mean feat to be named New Zealand's Sportsman of the 20th Century but it was just one of a host of accolades this remarkable Kiwi achieved.

He spoke with me as a celebration of his Tokyo success 50 years on at Radio Live in Auckland in September 2014.

You can listen here: 

Sir Peter Snell Interview