Two of his runners, Peter Snell and Murray Halberg, won Olympic gold medals within an hour of each other in Rome in 1960 and a third, Barry Magee, won the bronze medal in the marathon (the distance at which Lydiard represented New Zealand at the 1950 Empire Games in Auckland). Lydiard was largely credited with introducing stamina-based training programmes and with beginning the world-wide jogging boom. After coaching the New Zealand team in Tokyo in 1964, Lydiard was the Mexican national coach 1965-66, the chief coach in Finland from 1967 to 1969 and the Danish Olympic coach in 1972. He continued to be in demand in many countries, but also coached New Zealand teams at the 1974 and 1990 Commonwealth Games. Lydiard was made a life member of Athletics New Zealand in 2003. Return to the Inductee list