How Far Have We Come?
Feb 12, 2021 — Just as I was writing my blog on “The Magical Week”, Anne Audain shared a link about the new Wanganui Mile — the Cooks Classic. Actually, it is not the new event; it was last run in 1969 and has not been run as the mile race; it was replaced with the metric equivalent of 1500m. So Heather Matthews, another Lydiard-trained runner, being the last Cooks Classic mile champion, remained the New Zealand mile champion for the past 52 years (the article HERE). Anne told me that her 4:33.93 had been the resident record since 1983 and this is supposed to be an attempt to at least better this resident record. Anne of course is known better as the winningest road racer perhaps in history!! Her record shows more with 10k-15k range on the road. In fact, I personally feel, had there been a women’s 10,000m at 1984 Los Angels Olympics, she most probably would have come home with a medal if not the gold medal. But as a youngster, she was primarily 800–1500m runner. Her resident record still stands as the 8th fastest female mile time for New Zealand. Naturally, other 7 faster times were run overseas where faster times with more competitions were easily attainable.
So once again, I started to wonder…. It is easy to realize times run in the pre-rubber track era, either cinder or grass, to be a second or so slower than the rubberized “all-weather” track. Snell’s 800m — and the mile — time is exceptional. Unbroken for 59 years as the national record!! That would have to be considered as one of the longest standing record of all time. What about other times and other runners?
Anne Audain recently sent me a whole bunch of copies of her training log. Along with them, she also sent me some “goodies”. One of them was “New Zealand Runner” magazine with an article about her retiring. It was in 1991. Interestingly, there was an article about New Zealand miling: “New Zealand’s 19 Sub 4 Minute Milers” (At that point in 1991, there had been 19 sub 4-minute milers in New Zealand). Granted, this article was written 30 years ago so naturally, “current” great New Zealand miler, Nick Willis’ name is not there along with other up-and-coming middle distance runners. But at that point in 1991, Snell’s mile time (3:54.1) stood at 3rd fastest time in NZ all-time list. But John Davies (3:56.8 in 1964 when he finished behind Snell in his world record mile) at 6th; Murray Halberg (3:57.5 in 1958!!) was 8th; and Bill Baillie (!!) with 3:59.2 run in 1964 stood at 15th fastest mile in NZ. All these guys ran on either grass or cinder track. But the one with Bill Baillie particularly caught my attention. When I got together with him in 1984, he told me that he didn’t possess “natural talent” of Snell or Halberg. Interestingly, he told me that it was when he decided to move up the distance (because he never broke 4-minute for the mile) that he SLOWED DOWN his workouts that he all of a sudden broke 4-minutes (but that’s another blog story…). And his mile time still stood at the 15th spot for NZ’s all-time list??? Of this list, out of these 19 athletes, I counted at least 13 of them were directly or indirectly trained by Arthur Lydiard or other Lydiard-coaches.
There had been some very good distance runners coming from New Zealand in the recent years along with Nick Willis; Willis, the two-time Olympic medalist (silver in 2008 and bronze in 2016) of course, won the gold medal for 2006 Commonwealth Games 1500m with the fellow Kiwi, Paul Hamblyn finishing 4th. Another Kiwi, Adrian Brinco, unfortunately collided with Australia’s Craig Mottram but Brinco would go on to break Dick Quax’s NZ national 5,000m record…by 2 seconds. Quax’s record stood for 31 years. Zane and Jake Robertson had been very interesting subjects in the past decade; they moved to Kenya/Ethiopia when they were 17-years-old and had been trained at altitude with great East African runners ever since. They have been breaking national records — they both improved NZ national marathon record as with national 10,000m record. For the latter, Zane ran 27:33 at Rio Olympics heat; then Jake improved it to 27:30 two years later. Dick Quax held the record with 27:41…set in 1977!! It took these semi-altitude twin brothers NINE years to improve Quax’s record by 8 seconds. Incidentally, they both came very close to Quax’s 5,000m record but stayed a few seconds behind.
Now NZ’s national mile record is 3:49.08 by John Walker — he improved his incredible history’s first sub-3:50 mile record 7 years after this epic run. Second fastest time belongs to Nick Willis respectively. Snell’s record still stands at the 5th fastest NZ time; Halberg’s 21st. For the men’s side, quite a few young promising athletes are coming up, including Dick Quax’s son, Theo, who has run 3:58.13 in early 2020 to join his father on the top 25 in NZ all-time list. At the Cooks Classic in Wanganui, another young Kiwi, Sam Tanner (21) ran a brilliant 3:54.97 and won it — only a half a second slower than Snell’s first world record at the very location (though, of course, the actual track has been updated). And the women’s race? Well, Camille Buscomb(31) ran 4:38.78 and the took the title from young Pam Macdermid (24) by a couple of seconds (thanks, Kim Stevenson, for the information!!). Buscomb is the second fastest 5,000m runner as a New Zealander behind Kim Smith. Anne Audain’s 15:13.22, her first attempt at the distance on the track which turned out to be the world record at that time, still stands at the 4th fastest time in New Zealand. Her 10,000m time also at 4th fastest time and her Commonwealth Games winning performance at 3,000m with 8:45.53 stands the second fastest time in all-time New Zealand list with Boscomb’s 8:45.97 close third. I guess Annie’s resident mile time may still be safe for a while. — Nobby Hashizume
PS: For anybody who is interested in understanding more about just how far we have come in the recent years as far as the athletic performance is concerned, I highly recommend you check out this TED talk. Very interesting and may open up the new way of thinking for you.
