Top world athletes to attend funeral of coaching great

The funeral service will be held in Auckland today for the New Zealand athletics icon credited with some of the world's most successful coaching techniques.

The man said to be the country's greatest athletics coach, Arthur Lydiard, died aged 87 in the United States last week while on a coaching and lecture tour.

His funeral in the Auckland Town Hall today will be attended by some of the world's greatest athletes, including a star pupil, New Zealand middle distance runner and Olympic gold medallist Peter Snell.

Snell, who won three Olympic medals, said soon after Lydiard died, that he had changed his life.

Snell had dinner with Lydiard in the US a few days before his death.

"I was a run-of-the-mill type runner and he encouraged me to dream big dreams," Snell said.

Lydiard had his own athletics milestones. At 33 he ran the marathon at the 1950 Empire (Commonwealth) Games in Auckland and finished 12th. He also won the 1955 and 1957 New Zealand marathon titles.

His unique training methods involved giving athletes long, slow runs, topped off with fast work as fine-tuning. He said it took years to bring results but the results were spectacular.

Other top athletes Lydiard coached included Murray Halberg who won an Olympics gold medal the same day as Snell in Rome in 1960, Barry Magee (marathon bronze at Rome) Dick Tayler, Rod Dixon, Dick Quax and 1976 Olympic 1500m champion John Walker.

His influence spread beyond athletics, with coaches in sports ranging from rugby to rowing, canoeing and swimming adopting his training methods.

He was also credited with sparking the worldwide spread of jogging from the mid-1960s.

His funeral today was expected to attract more than 1000 mourners.

- NZPA