Media Room
Press ReleasesApril 6, 2004
Peter Snell: Power And Speed
In 1933 New Zealand runner Jack Lovelock put his country on the Four-Minute-Mile quest, running a world record 4 minutes, 7.6 seconds. Three years later Lovelock, a former Rhodes scholar, won the Olympic 1,500-metre gold medal at the Games in Berlin in a world record 3:47.8.
It would be 24 years before another Kiwi runner emerged to top the world in middle distance running but when unheralded New Zealander Peter Snell upset the world to win the 1960 Olympic 800-metre final in Rome it was the beginning of a remarkable five-year international reign of domination that ended too soon in 1965.
Tall and muscular, Snell's powerful build was unusual and as a youngster he excelled at tennis in addition to running and a variety of sports. Also unusual were the training methods of his coach, Arthur Lydiard, whose recipe for running success required athletes to combine enormous amounts oftraining mileage with hill and speed work.
Snell came to Rome as a 21-year-old seeking to gain experience for what might be better chances in 1964. But he came away with the Olympic gold medal in the two-lap event, running an Olympic record 1:46.3 to edge world record holder Roger Moens of Belgium.
On Jan. 27, 1962 Snell, whose 1961 exploits proved his Olympic gold medal was no fluke, thrilled a home country crowd in Wanganui by running the mile in a world record 3:54.4 seconds to better the previous mark of 3:54.5 set by Australian Herb Elliott in 1958. A week later he also set world records for 800 metres and 880 yards.
There was no overlooking the New Zealander at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. Snell successfully defended his Olympic 800-metre title by taking the gold medal with Canada's Bill Crothers earning the silver. In the 1,500 metres Snell was a runaway winner to gain the Tokyo Olympic gold medal double. Experts have since marveled that Snell's 800-metre effort of 1:45.1 in Tokyo would have been enough to win the silver medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. He capped off his outstanding 1964 campaign by rewriting his own world mile mark, running a 3:54.1 in Auckland.
In 1965, after a series of disappointing results, including a last-place finish mile finish in Vancouver while suffering a stomach ailment, Snell surprised the athletics world by announcing he would retire from competition. At age 27, with five individual world records and a relay world mark to his credit, it seemed too soon to end a brilliant career. He went on to earn a PhD in exercise physiology, later teaching and studying at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. Snell was later named New Zealand's Sports Champion of the 20th Century.
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