By David

I had lunch today with Arch Jelley and his wife Jean. It is very possible you won’t recognize the name. Arch is a quiet man who has never practiced the self promotion so characteristic of many other sporting personalities. His record as one of the world’s leading track coaches takes some beating. He coached John Walker, the first man to break 3.50 for a mile and Olympic 1500 champion. He advised Rod Dixon, winner of the New York marathon and coached a fistful of other international athletes, such as Pfitzinger, Wright, Norris, Carson, Moore and Wilde. For a couple of years in the 1980s Arch contributed to the career of America’s best miler, Steve Scott. While I’ve been away from New Zealand he’s been inducted into the Coaching Hall of Fame and has served a term as President of Athletics New Zealand. Not a bad sporting Resume so far, I’m sure you will agree.

I first met Arch early in Alison’s running career. We lived in London at the time and wanted Alison to return to New Zealand for a summer of track racing. That had more appeal than a British cross country winter spent plodding through a muddy field outside Slough or over London’s frozen Parliament Hill. I called Arch to ask if he would look after Alison while she was in New Zealand. He did more than that. He asked me what training Alison was doing and suggested some major changes. He sounded surprised and impressed with Alison’s 100 miles a week of aerobic conditioning. He sounded equally surprised and unimpressed with my description of her anaerobic and speed work training. A week later a long letter arrived setting out an alternative track schedule.

For six weeks we followed Arch’s program. He kept the anaerobic weekly mileage (60 miles) the same but severely reduced the number and size of the interval sets. It is probably a small exaggeration but before Arch came along my idea of speed work was to run as far and as fast as humanly possible; and often more than was humanly possible. No wonder Arch was unimpressed with the description of my anaerobic training. He probably couldn’t believe it. Best of all he introduced Alison and me to his signature Monday afternoon eight lapper. It’s a tough anaerobic run and not for the faint hearted or under conditioned. Arch also reduced the intensity of my speed work sets and introduced such novel ideas as time trials and 50/50 fartlek runs.

And it worked. In her first race in Auckland Alison beat two of the mainstays of New Zealand’s middle distance running, Shirley Somerville and Sue Haden. Two months later she won the 1500 meters National Championship and was selected to run for New Zealand in a New Zealand/Australia dual meet.

Clearly a relationship had been formed that was well worth preserving. For six years I called Arch most Monday mornings for advice and instruction. Alison won New Zealand, Scotland and United Kingdom national championships. She competed in world track and cross country championships. She set national records in New Zealand and Scotland, one of which, thirty one years later, still stands as the New Zealand National Open Record. None of that would have happened without the input of this quiet Auckland gentleman.

In my career I have been especially privileged to learn much of the coaching trade from Arch Jelley and Arthur Lydiard from track and Duncan Laing and Ross Anderson from swimming. They are four world class master coaches. They are examples of all that’s best in the New Zealand character; straight and tough; no bullshit. If one day my coaching comes close to their standard I will be well pleased.

So what else is Arch Jelley like? Well he has a lethal sense of humor. Last weekend one of Arch’s runners, Hamish Carson, won the New Zealand 1500 Championship. Arch was asked to present the gold medal. As he shook Carson’s hand I’m told Arch looked puzzled and asked, “What’s your name again?” At lunch today we were talking about Kim Smith the fantastic New Zealand 5000 and 10000 meter runner. She’s ranked in the world’s top ten and is as skinny as a rake. I’ve seen more fat on a butcher’s pencil. Arch couldn’t resist. “Pity she’s so overweight,” he said. He is forever doing that sort of thing. As the plane taxied into Warsaw airport a few years ago Arch saw the name spelt in Polish and muttered, “They don’t know how to spell the name of their own airport.”

He’s had an interesting career outside of athletics as well. On the same trip to Poland John Walker said, “Well this is our first trip to a communist country.” Arch said, “No I’ve been to Russia before.” Turns out that in World War Two he was a young submarine navigator protecting convoys delivering supplies to the Arctic Russian town of Murmansk. Now that was a really dangerous job. He’d never even mentioned it before. After the war he came back to New Zealand, got a degree and became a school teacher. He ended up as principal of one of New Zealand’s leading and biggest teaching primary schools. I tell you what; young teachers could not have had a better person to teach them their trade. Neither could young coaches.