Skip to main content

Peter Snell Lectures at Tokyo Kaiyo University

by Brett Larner

1964 Tokyo Olympic 800 and 1500 m gold medalist Peter Snell of New Zealand delivered a lecture at Tokyo Kaiyo University on Mar. 27 as part of a lecture tour of Japan to promote his research into the physiologocial basis of the training system designed by Snell's coach and mentor Arthur Lydiard. Audience members in the full auditorium included marathon great Masako Chiba, Japanese men's 1500 m national record holder Fumikazu Kobayashi, national 800 m champion Masato Yokota, and a variety of coaches and other athletes.

After an introduction by the Lydiard Foundation's Nobby Hashizume, Snell gave his lecture, then fielded questions from audience members including Kobayashi and Yokota. His exchange with Yokota turned into an extended debate over the merits of jogging as part of a middle distance runner's training. Snell's tour was scheduled to continue over the weekend in Gunma Prefecture with a workshop featuring panelists such as Olympic marathoner Toshinari Suwa.

(c) 2008 Brett Larner
all rights reserved

Comments

Most-Read This Week

Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)

After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox  for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...

How it Happened

Ancient History I went to Wesleyan University, where the legend of four-time Boston Marathon champ and Wes alum Bill Rodgers hung heavy over the cross-country team. Inspired by Koichi Morishita and Young-Cho Hwang’s duel at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics I ran my first marathon in 1993, qualifying for Boston ’94 where Bill was kind enough to sign a star-struck 20-year-old me’s bib number at the expo. Three years later I moved to Japan for grad school, and through a long string of coincidences I came across a teenaged kid named Yuki Kawauchi down at my neighborhood track. I never imagined he’d become what he is, but right from the start there was just something different about him. After his 2:08:37 breakthrough at the 2011 Tokyo Marathon he called me up and asked me to help him get into races abroad. He’d finished 3rd on the brutal downhill Sixth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden, and given how he’d run the hills in the last 6 km at Tokyo ’11 I thought he’d do well at Boston or New York. “I...