About Arthur Lydiard
Arthur Leslie Lydiard was a New Zealand runner and athletics coach. He has been lauded as one of the outstanding athletics coaches of all time and is credited with popularising the sport of running and making it commonplace across the sporting world. His training methods are based on a strong endurance base and periodisation. The first signs of positive results from Lydiard's visit came when Juha Väätäinen won the 5.000 and the 10.000 meters in the 1971 European Athletics Championships after blasting sprint finishes. In 1961, with his group of followers, Lydiard organised the Auckland Jogging Club, a world first. Due to this background and the Finns' reluctance to change, his stay initially created mixed reviews. In Johannesburg, South Africa, one of the few athletics clubs in the world to be named after a coach, the Lydiard Athletics Club, was founded in 2009 to promote Lydiard's training methodology and promote running as a way of life amongst youth.
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