Herb Elliot and Triathlon

Once I went to listen to a conference dictated by Bob Bowman in Acapulco about Michael Phelps and his training regimen.  Bowman mentioned something there: “If you have a world champion appearing for the first time in the international arena, he/she comes in the top ten; Michael was top ten since his first competition as elite at the age of 15.”  I videotaped what Bowman said during the hours he presented.  I came to understand what he said years later.  The same thing is true for Herb Elliott and other great athletes.  Where are the coaches who think they created the athlete or influenced greatly the athletes?  Elliott was a champion before Cerutty and many other great athletes were already champions when they are discovered; except Phelps and few others.  Natalie Coughlin was also discovered; she was 15 years of age and able to swim two seconds slower than when she won 100 meter backstroke gold in Athens 10 years later.  Making a champion is very different from finding a champion.  I will show you some data.

During the past Triathlon Championship, Australia and New Zealand obtained the greatest number of medals.  It is because they have a good athletic culture that supports the athletes.  The data is there and there are few other explanations for this phenomenon.  Our team obtained the 12th place because we were the only ones that obtained a medal and had a fourth and a ninth place in the junior elite category representing Mexico.

2012 Triathlon World Championships - Auckland

Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
Australia	19	13	15	47
New Zealand	18	13	16	47
Great Britain	12	10	11	33
United States	11	15	14	40
Canada	2	4	3	9
France	2	3	1	6
Spain	2	2	0	4
Germany	1	2	0	3
Brazil	1	1	2	4
Japan	1	0	0	1
South Africa	1	0	0	1
Mexico	0	1	0	1

Keep in mind what we have said in previous posts and what Wikipedia says about Arthur Lydiard working in Mexico.

While the work he did in the late 1960s in Finland is generally acknowledged to have led to the renaissance in Finnish distance running in the 1970s (with Pekka Vasala winning gold in the 1500 metres at the 1972 Munich Olympics and Lasse Virén winning gold in both the 5000 metres and 10,000 metres at the 1972 Olympics and the 1976 Montreal Olympics), his coaching experiences in Mexico and Venezuela were less successful. Lydiard was forced to leave both countries because of what he perceived as a lack of support for his coaching efforts and the needs of athletes there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Lydiard  

Let´s go back to business.  What the “discovery coach” does is to continue with the work done at home; but in the case of Michael Phelps and us, we have to create the champion from scratch.  If you see the times of Nicola Spirig, you would see that she has a running leg almost as fast as when she won the gold medal at the age of 18:

2000 Perth ITU Triathlon World Championships : Junior Women : Results

Principio del formulario

Final del formulario

Pos	First Name	Last Name	Country		Time	Swim	T1	Bike	T2	Run
1	Anneliese	Heard	GBR		02:10:05	00:19:07	00:00:56	01:11:59	00:00:26	00:37:34
2	Melanie	Mitchell	AUS		02:11:27	00:19:05	00:00:58	0.05	00:00:22	00:39:00
3	Nicola	Spirig	SUI		02:12:18	00:21:11	00:00:24	01:14:04	00:00:29	00:36:05

What about Elliott?

Born and brought up in Perth, Western Australia, Elliott had shown great promise before he met Cerutty. He was first seen by Cerutty winning a Mile in 4:22.  An impressed Cerutty asked to meet the 17-year-old schoolboy and was invited to the Elliott family home in Perth for dinner. At this meeting he said to Elliott: “There’s not a shadow of doubt that within two years you will run a Mile in four minutes.” (Elliott, The Golden Mile, p.26) … Elliott’s improvement was meteoric. On January 12, 1957, Elliott, angry at being put in a B race, ran the Mile in 4:06, a Junior WR. At the end of that month he ran the same time to win the Victoria Championships. Soon after he ran an 880 Junior WR with a 1:50.8. After another two 4:06 runs, he improved to 4:04.4. Then at the end of the Australian season he came up against the experienced Olympian Merv Lincoln in the national championships. Stampfl-coached Lincoln led at 4:00 pace until Elliott sped past just before the bell and held on to win in 4:00.4.  Cerutty’s prophecy in Perth had come true.   

    

http://racingpast.ca/john_contents.php?id=96

If you have the right culture, you just need the “TROUVEUR” as the French would say.  But unfortunately, as an African friend would say when doing research: “Je suis chercheur, pas trouveur.”