BACK TRACKING: John Taylor with the handcrafted leather track shoes he had custom made in Brisbane in the 1960s. PHOTOS/Warren Buckland
NOT many people can say it and keep a straight face but John Winston Taylor can in claiming to have possibly given Sir Peter Snell a good licking in his heyday - not once but twice.
And no, Taylor's assertion doesn't come with any double-entrende subclauses pertaining to the $2 stamp New Zealand Post issued to commemorate the feats of the Kiwi running legend who won three Olympic gold medals and made the 800m and 1500m distances his own in the 1960s.
It does come with a catch, though.
"I have to be very careful when I say this but I might have been the only guy who has beaten Snell twice," says the 75-year-old from Havelock North, before breaking into a grin to clarify Snell often dropped to the 400-yard (365m) distance in those days to bolster the speed for his specialist middle distances.
"So I used to kick his arse when he did that," he says with a laugh of the 77-year-old who now lives in Texas.
The Auckland-born Taylor, who lived in Carterton, went on to enjoy the golden era of track and field alongside the likes of Snell, Sir Murray Halberg and Barry Magee as a young gun in the 1960s at the Auckland Athletic Centre.
In his late teens, Taylor often competed in Australia and twice went to the British Championship in London.
The likes of Snell, Halberg, Magee and Olympian Les Mills "were so grounded".
"We weren't star-struck because they were such down-to-earth guys, typical of Kiwis and very modest," says Taylor.
No doubt there were post-meeting shindigs where it was the norm to rub shoulders with athletes from other regions, including All Blacks, swimmers and boxers.
A retired banking industry employee who switched lanes to sales and marketing in the airfreight industry, Taylor hails from an era when Wairarapa athletes in the mould of Randolph Rose and Ralph Gulley created a stir in Wellington.
Rose won his maiden race in the capital with such ease that he "hurdled the finishing tape and was promptly disqualified", according to the March edition of the Sports Digest in 1958.
When Taylor won the colts' 880-yard (804m) race that month, writer PN Henidenstrom described his trademark run as "a long, loping stride that looks to be overdone but which experts say is the natural result of perfect relaxation".
He puts down missing out on Olympic Games to "bad timing".
"I was too young for the 1960 Rome Olympics.
"In the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, I won the New Zealand title but the finances weren't like what they are today," says Taylor, who that year pursued a paying career to London where he joined Herne Hill Athletic Club before spreading his wings to compete in Europe.
In the southern county of England, he clocked "a pretty good" 6.4s over 60 yards (55m) at an indoor meeting.
That caught the interest of rugby league clubs and soon Taylor found himself playing semi-professionally for Leigh club in Manchester.
"They were going through a period of recruiting athletes for speed but nowadays they look at size and strength and everything else," says the former school rugby union player from Auckland. But athletics had kicked in at 16.
In 1965, he chucked his track shoes in the attic to return to rugby union as a winger at 24, strictly as an amateur.
"I couldn't see any benefits in running although now there's some decent money in it."
His stint for the Leigh club was predominantly at the second-tier level although he ended up playing a dozen at the top echelon.
"You had to get permission from rugby union and athletics to switch to rugby league and the associations were a law unto themselves in those days so they could restrict your movements."
His rugby league earnings weren't something to sneeze at.
"What I was making in a month working for a bank I was making in one game of rugby league."
But Taylor didn't enjoy it that much and counted his blessings in getting out of the code relatively free of injuries.
"The only time I got injured [cheekbone] was from my own teammate.
"It was deliberate because in their eyes me and another Aussie bloke were taking locals' jobs."
He still has the pair of handcrafted track shoes he got custom-made in Brisbane in the 1960s.
"It cost 10 pounds and in those days it was half a week's salary."
Despite the heavy-leather appearance, the track shoes were remarkably comfortable because they were handmade.
"Because they are today so ultra light due to nylon products they weigh a quarter of what those leather shoes were," says the man who only ran on a couple of all-weather tracks in the twilight of his athletics stint, but realises the modern apparel slashed the time by half a second in sprints.
He won six national sprint titles - one each in 100 yards and 200 yards and four in 440 yards.
His personal best 100-yard time was a wind-assisted 9.5s; he clocked 21.4s in 200 yards and 47.2s over 400 yards.
For about 20 years, arthritis has put paid to any Masters Games aspirations but he manages three rounds of golf a week at Golflands in Hastings.
He is the sole child of working-class parents, the late Joan and Jack Taylor, who met and married in Whangarei before gravitating to Auckland where he was born.
"My father was a butcher and mum would do anything to put extras around the table primarily as a nurse but, of course, with a kid she did all sorts of part-time jobs."
Jack Taylor was an "excellent Auckland rugby league player", sitting on the fringe of Kiwis selection.
"I was a mascot - at that time 2-year-olds were dressed up to sit in photos - but I did enjoy watching my father play later on," he says with a smile of approval.
When John Taylor attended Wairarapa College, when the family moved down to settle, rugby league wasn't even on the radar because it was strictly union territory.
"Apparently my mother was a half-way decent runner at high school in Whangarei so that's where my [running genes] probably comes from."
Growing up, Taylor intrinsically sensed he was quicker than others. Not surprisingly, at 15 he was taking his mark at national and international meetings.
"I would always get from point to point much quicker than anyone else so once I got on an organised track I knew I was going to be faster."
A Wairarapa teacher, Jim McKenzie, took him under his wing and Taylor's father kept time during practice to stimulate his high-twitch fibres at Carterton Club.
On leaving school, he worked at a bank in Wellington and made it into the junior/senior athletics teams in the capital.
"At that time all the better athletes were in Auckland during the golden era of Snell and Halberg."
It wasn't unusual to find 50,000 fans cheering athletes on at Eden Park, Auckland.
"Most of it was standing room because that's the way the ground was configured in those days," says Taylor, who moved to the Big Smoke when he was 17.
He met his wife, Linda, a Texan, while he was working in New York somewhat belatedly because of his itinerant lifestyle.
"We worked in the same company and we ran into each so one thing led to another, as it does ... but I got married late at 31.
"In those days if you married that late people looked at you in a different way."
Taylor was offered American sport scholarships to the University of Chicago and University of Southern California but he turned them down.
"It sounds silly but I had other things to do."
Besides, Taylor had worked out US varsities tended to regard versatile athletes of his ilk as "workhorses" for the team.
"You know, run them in the 100, 200 and two relays so they expected four events in a day from you and worked you hard, even though it was fun.
"Athletes, by nature, are individuals so the idea of being tied down to team events wasn't going to boost my opportunities to do better," he says, finding a similar thread in England "with that Commonwealth attitude".
As a 20-year-old who had had a taste of office life, returning to lecture theatres to sit next to 18-year-olds didn't appeal to him.
"At that time the bank [National] used to be very generous with time off and things."
Having had a look at the $120,000 offered at an auction for Snell's Ferns singlet (which buyers Te Papa Museum later returned as unauthentic), a jovial Taylor wishes he had kept his.
His insatiable desire to travel abroad lay dormant until he was in his 20s, culminating in visits to more than 80 countries.
"My OE lasted some time. I went away for a few months and returned home 40 years later."