Percy Cerutty, the coach who shaped Herb Elliott with sand dunes
There are coaches who follow methods. And then there is Percy Cerutty, who invented one, late in life, almost by accident, and ended up transforming an Australian teenager into one of the greatest middle-distance runners in history. His story, told by British coach Harry Wilson who knew him well, was translated and published in the magazine Spiridon No. 24 of February-March 1976, shortly after Cerutty's death.
From a hospital bed to the dunes of Portsea
Percy Cerutty did not discover athletics until he was already advanced in age, prompted by a serious illness that forced him to entirely rethink his way of life. What could have remained a simple personal recovery became an obsession, then a philosophy of life. For years, Australians mocked his ideas. Then, little by little, a small group of athletes agreed to adopt his discipline, mentally and physically. Derision then turned into admiration.
When Harry Wilson met him for the first time in Cardiff in 1958, Cerutty was sixty-three years old but looked fifty. He was surrounded by his Australian runners Elliott, Thomas, and Power, the living proof of his method.
The Stotans, or training as a way of life
Cerutty set up his training camp in Portsea, facing the immense waves of the Pacific and its coarse sand dunes. He called the athletes who came to train there "Stotans"—a contraction of stoic and Spartan. A typical weekend combined long runs, dumbbell work, repeated timed dune climbs, philosophy lessons given by Percy himself, and frugal, natural meals. Few left the little wooden house in Portsea without being deeply marked by it.
The title of one of his books summarizes his entire philosophy: "Be fit or be damned!" Cerutty did not see himself as a simple motivator, but as a true master of running, having thoroughly studied the physiology and mechanics of the human body before developing his theories on natural bodybuilding and running technique.
Rome 1960: "a racehorse among donkeys"
Cerutty's career reached its zenith when his most fervent disciple, Herb Elliott, seized the gold medal in the 1500m at the 1960 Rome Games, breaking the world record in the process and dominating the race in such a masterful way that an Italian newspaper summarized it as follows: "a racehorse among donkeys." Elliott would finish his career without ever having lost a race at that distance.
For Cerutty, this victory was also a revenge. His approach, based on brute force and physical transcendence, stood in contrast to the clinical school of coaches like Stampfl or Gerschler, who were very popular at the time. His talents, he felt with bitterness, had never been sufficiently recognized by the Australian athletics authorities.
"Whatever you do, son, do not do it in moderation"
When Harry Wilson found him again in 1973, Cerutty was 78 years old and still running on short courses, demonstrating his four basic gaits: the trot, the little hops, the gallop, and the shortening of stride preceding an acceleration. Still as sturdy with dumbbells, he continued to harangue his listeners from what was jokingly called "Percy's lectern." It was there that he dropped, between two speeches that Wilson already knew by heart, this now-cult phrase: "Whatever you do, son, do not do it in moderation!"
He remained up to date with the world of running news: admiring of Lasse Viren and Dave Bedford, he recommended that Wilson keep a close watch on a young, still-unknown New Zealander by the name of Walker—John Walker, the future world record holder for the mile.
What remains of Cerutty
Percy Cerutty left behind athletes and coaches marked for life by his teaching, and an insistence on bodybuilding in the preparation of the long-distance runner that would have a lasting influence on the discipline. Harry Wilson concluded his tribute with a quote from Shakespeare, which he felt was tailor-made for Cerutty: "He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again!"
This idea that radical training, rooted in nature and self-transcendence, is worth any clinical method, is also one of the threads that connect Cerutty to the spirit of free running defended since 1972 by the magazine Spiridon—and which we find today in our technical collection, designed for runners who want to get back to basics.
Franck Tuil - Author - Specialist in running culture