Beginning our 14th year and 1,200+ postings. A blog for athletes and fans of 20th century Track and Field culled from articles in sports journals of the day, original articles, book reviews, and commentaries from readers who lived and ran and coached in that era. We're equivalent to an Amer. Legion post of Track and Field but without cheap beer. You may contact us directly at irathermediate@gmail.com or write a comment below. George Brose, Courtenay, BC ed.
This article first appeared in The Guardian on May 7, 1930 a little over 90 years ago. The modern Guardian chose to publish it on May 7, 2020. We thought our readers would be interested to see this and look at the analysis that went into the writing so long ago. Not something out of a book on training just a daily newspaper. Like any article, more might well have been written. More details of Nurmi's life, amateurism battles, his fellow Finns, or other athletes of those days, or his overseas tours. But we still felt this was well worth reading. HIs career in distance running was indeed pivotal in the sport.
George
Thanks so much for the Blog on Paavo Nurmi.
When I became a runner, Paavo Nurmi was one of the first famous runner
that I read about and came to revere! John Bork Jr.
Surprised to see an article from 1930 with so much biomechanical analysis. The article seems very technical for the Guardian. I enjoyed it.
Bruce Kritzler
The stride pattern thing left me scratching my head (but then many things do). For a 4:10 guy who took no breathers, the 2:08.1 middle half mile seems to the contrary. Roy
I had a similar sense but just wanted to see if you read the article. You get extra credit. G.
Paavo Nurmi and the art of middle-distance running – archive, 1930
by FAM Webster
7 May 1930 The Finnish athlete proved his theory that a mile race should be run all in one piece. There are no “breathers” in Nurmi’s races
Paavo Nurmi in action at the Paris Olympic Games, 1924. Photograph: Gamma-Keystone France/Getty Images
ictures of Paavo Nurmi, Finland, have been chosen to illustrate the art of middle-distance running not only because he holds the world’s one-mile record of 4min 10 2-5sec, and has held almost every record from1,500 metres in 3min 52 3-5sec to 15 kilometres in 46min 49½sec, but also because it was he who completely revolutionised the world’s preconceived notions of middle-distance mannerisms, methods, and time schedules.
In the first place Nurmi has never trained with other runners, and behind every big race he has run on the track have been hundreds of unobserved miles reeled off on frozen Finnish roads, with a battered old stopwatch for his sole companion. From the very first Nurmi set out to match his strides against time, and in the process he has evolved those terrible time schedules which have broken the heart of every man who has run against him.
(I) Nurmi beginning the stride (Manchester Guardian, 7 May 1930).
Before Nurmi’s appearance milers had developed the habit of running a fast first quarter-mile, easing off during the middle stages, and finishing with a burst of speed. Nurmi changed all that when he produced and proved his theory that a mile race should be run all in one piece. There are no “breathers” in Nurmi’s races, no chances to store up energy for a final sprint, and since he plots out his race in advance and sticks religiously to his time schedule, it became an axiom, when he was in his prime, that the man who wanted to beat him would need to break the world’s record to accomplish his desire.
(II) Leg drive.
He is an extraordinarily reticent sort of person, but when he does deign to make a remark it is worth listening to. One such pronouncement was, “I win my races in the third quarter-mile.” This might be interpreted to mean that that was where his opponents lost the race, for it is in this stage that most runners are accustomed to ease the pace so that they may recuperate before the final struggle. His consistency is well shown by the actual quarter-mile lap times he returned when he set the mile record at 4min 10 2-5sec. They were:
Another respect in which Nurmi has altered all theories of middle-distance running is in relation to style. Hitherto men had run distances with a slight forward body lean and a low arm carriage. Nurmi, on the other hand, has standardised a vertical running posture in Finland, and his gospel is rapidly spreading to other countries. As will be seen from the illustrations, his body is carried almost bolt upright above his slender hips; his head is held well up, and his chest thrust out to ensure plenty of air for his abnormally large lungs and peculiarly slow-beating heart.
He never comes up on his toes except at the end of the leg drive which starts a fresh stride forward, as shown in picture 2; and at the end of each stride he sinks right down on to the heel of the grounded foot and lets his knee give a little, as seen in pictures 1 and 7. His feet seem to reach out for the track, and each stride ends with the peculiar forward flick of the foot, shown in pictures 5 and 6, and yet he lands not on the toes but far back on the ball of the foot, before the heel is let down on to the cinders.
He has been called a “tractor type” of runner. There is a good deal in this, for as soon as his foot is down it seems to draw him along before the body swings forward above the grounded foot and the strong leg-drive action, seen in picture 2, is put into force. His stride action is so smooth and frictionless that there is an actual visual impression of graceful motion. As seen in pictures 3 to 6, he uses a long, bounding stride, and the one respect in which he does not contravene accepted principles is that the heel of the rear leg never rises above the level of its own knee, as is proved by pictures 4 and 5.
Owing to a certain fondness for the throwing events as a boy, Paavo Nurmi’s torso is abnormally developed, otherwise he could not possibly employ his own peculiar arm action, which other Finnish runners, such as Larva and Purje, of Olympic fame, have copied with remarkable success. None the less he has nothing in the way of physical equipment which hundreds of English runners do not possess, but he does have an invincible determination to excel as a distance runner, and the willingness to pay the price of building up time schedules.
It has been said already that most runners favour a low arm carriage; Nurmi’s hands never fall below the level of his middle, nor are they ever allowed to pass behind his hips, so that he gets a lot of his leverage from a swinging shoulder twist, as is made plain by the illustrations. He has a very high hand carriage, combined with a twist of the upper arm backwards and a most peculiar trick of bending the hand on the wrist to balance his running action.
Two points to notice especially are that his head is always poised upright above his centre of gravity, and that the leading leg is kept hanging behind or directly under its own knee until the lower leg swings forward and the foot shoots out to take the track. This, combined with the long hang of his rear leg, is a factor which contributes greatly to the amazing length of his stride, which is said to be 8ft 6in, when he is travelling at speed; a very long stretch for a man who stands 5ft 101in and weighs 10½st.
Nurmi has two other peculiarities; one is that he does not in the least mind eating a large apple a few minutes before a big race, and he has been known to trot as much as two miles by way of limbering up for a five-mile race. He started his career as a 10,000-metre runner in 1920, was back to the mile distance in 1924, and is now preparing for a serious attempt to break the world’s Marathon record for 26 miles 385 yards at the Olympic Games at Los Angeles in 1932.
Thanks George,
I remember standing by a statue of him at the start of the Helsinki City Marathon in 1984.. Inspiring.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution said it better than we can regarding Dick Buerkele including remembrances from his immediate family. We ask you to refer to this obituary written by Ken Sugiura.
The picture in the obituary is clearly Dick sitting at the foot of a statue commemorating Dave Wottle's victory at Munich. A month or so ago we posted this interview with Dave about a race the two men had in Rochester., NY one summer. see earlier article.
George,
Ironic how the picture and discussions you posted about Dick Buerkle occurred so closely to his passing away.
Just a note regarding the picture accompanying his obituary. He is posing at the feet of the top 4 finalishers in the Montreal Oly 5,000 won by Viren.
John Saunders, a true track nut and Atlanta lawyer serves as an Honorary Consul for Finland. He raised the money to have Finnish sculptor Eino honor Viren with a statue at the spot where Lasse entered Piedmont Park, the home stretch of the Peachtree Road Race.
I’m not sure what year he ran, but probably ‘73 or ‘74.
The connection between the Viren statue and Dick was the ‘76 Olympics where he did get to represent USA. he didn’t make the finals.
Then in ‘80, he didn’t get to run after making the team again cuz of the boycott.
Viren ran the Peachtree RR In ‘77, not earlier as I guessed.
This photo is from the Villanova track blog, taken in Germany in 1974.
Unknown runner, Marty Liquori, Tom Fleming, and Dick Buerkele all in sartorial splendor.
Note the European club set up with a swimming pool/diving tower right next to
the track.
George,
Flying back from Portland after 2016 Olympic Trials, I had a seat by Dick Buerkele. We had a good hour conversation about track and mutual friends. Dick had Parkinsons' and had to take some pills to calm his vibrations. Said he still managed to get in a run
most days. Everyone says he was a great guy, and I concur.
Bruce Kritzler
I love the “high water” adidas warm up pants Liquori is wearing
As most of you know, Peter Norman finished second in the 200 meters in Mexico City in 1968. We all know that had he not stood between Tommie Smith and John Carlos who raised their fists during the presentation ceremony and were subsequently expelled from the Games, he might have been a completely forgotten man. As it turned out,he was almost completely forgotten or stricken from Australian memories for his action. Many of you also know that Peter Norman supported both American runners by wearing one of their badges acknowledging racial injustice in the US. In his own country of Australia, aboriginal people had just been allowed to vote. White Australia was the official policy toward immigration. Norman was questioned afterward if he was also recognizing the injustice in his own country, and he made no denials of that stance. Though not as outspoken as American black athletes, Peter Norman took a stance in support of them. For his actions he paid dearly when he returned home. Four years later he was still the Australian record holder in the 200 and was running well enough to qualify again, but the Australian Athletics functionaries did not invite him to compete, to dodge the issue they did not send anyone to run the 200m. . At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, he was not invited to attend by the Australian organizers. A friend managed to provide him a ticket and he quietly managed to see the 200 final.
That was also a time when Australia had finally looked inward and made a public apology for their mistreatment of indigenous people. Whether they have made a serious attempt to make up for that mistreatment is another discussion entirely. Peter Norman may have been a forgotten man in his own country but he was not a forgotten man by the two men he honored on the Olympic podium. When Peter Norman died at the age of 64, Smith and Carlos came to his funeral, spoke, and were pall bearers.
In these days of uproar over our racial history, not just in the US but in many countries from where colonial rule emanated we are again being asked to recognize and admit to its continued existence. We can travel to virtually any country in the world where there is some form of racial injustice, not just white on black but ethnic injustice as well. When people have even a small degree of difference there is option for discrimination by one toward the other. It would be a boring world if we were not racially, culturally and ethnically diverse, so let's get over all these stigmas we attach to someone we think we are better than and learn to live in a way that allows us to benefit and enjoy and respect those differences and make our place a more peaceful world.
Here then is a link to Peter Norman's story. from History.com by Erin Blakemore
Thanks for the timely article. If memory serves me correctly, Norman ran something like a 20.1 or 20.2 which made only a few feet behind Tommie Smith. That was a truly great race. I did not know that the Australian authorities prevented him from competing in 1972. That’s sad story. He might have beat Borzov and that would have been quite an accomplishment.
Sincerely,
Bruce Geelhoed
Professor of History
Ball State University
Peter George Norman (15 June 1942 – 3 October 2006) was an Australian track athlete. He won the silver medal in the 200 metres at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, with a time of 20.06 seconds. This remains an Oceanian record.
Jim Grelle winning the Compton mile in 1961 over high schooler Tom Sullivan
who set the US high school record and world junior record in that race.
Yesterday we were informed that Jim Grelle passed away near his home town of Portland, Oregon.
To say he was one of the legends of American mile racing would of course be an understatement.
I had the pleasure of meeting Jim briefly a few years ago at the Prefontaine Meet. Though I don't remember the gist of that conversation, I do remember Jim's incredible wit and sense of humor. I think all I did was ask him to autograph Kenny Moore's book The Men of Oregon, but to me he made it an event.
Here is Jim pictured with other Oregon Ducks all going to the 1960 Olympics
Jim, Dave Edstrom, Sig Ohlemann, Bowerman, Harry Jerome, Bill Dellinger, and Otis Davis
He was the fourth American and second Oregon Duck to go under four minutes. He was a member of several national teams and finished 8th in the 1500 meters in the Rome Olympics. Many of us remember him as being the guy who lost a place on the 1964 US team being edged by a high school upstart, Jim Ryun at the US trials. If anyone was in the right place at the right time it was Jim Grelle, there in the early days of the Bowerman distance running era, part of the post grad Ducks program, and then moving down south to become part of the L.A. Track Club under Mihaly Igloi where he ran with Bob Schul, Jim Beatty, Laszlo Tabori, and John Bork.
In looking over what popped up on the internet today, I found this 2012 article by Gary Henley for the Daily Astorian to be more revealing about Jim Grelle than the list of obituaries from other sources. Apologies for the overlap on the sides.
Oregon legend Jim Grelle ran with the best
By GARY HENLEY
The Daily Astorian
GEARHART He's the North Coast's own running legend.
GEARHART, OR He's the North Coast's own running legend.
And while Jim Grelle takes as much pleasure nowadays playing and talking about golf, he still loves reminiscing about his running days, which took him from Lincoln High School to the University of Oregon to the Olympics.For nearly three decades, he ran with and against some of the all-time legends of track and field. Most Oregon track afficionados know the current names by heart, Ashton Eaton, Galen Rupp, Matt Centrowitz, Andrew Wheating, etc.
And Duck fans are certainly familiar with the names of the past. But few saw them compete, and even fewer know them personally. When those legendary names are mentioned, they're usually attached to statues, trophies, buildings or races , i.e., the Bill Bowerman Building, the Bill Dellinger Invitational, the Steve Prefontaine Classic.
Jim Grelle, you might say, is the source if you want to talk Oregon track and field history. He ran with Knight, ran with Dellinger, ran for Bowerman, and he did a whole lot more after his college days were over.
And you can still find Grelle, 76, in Gearhart. Not so much on the track, you're more likely to run into him on the golf course.
Running, however, is still one of his favorite subjects. Get him talking, and Grelle remembers times and places of races, even strategies and specific laps of specific races that took place more than 40 years ago.
The Early Days
Before the Ducks and before he became an Olympian, Grelle was one of the state's top high school runners as a student-athlete at Portland's Lincoln High School.
As a junior in the spring of 1954, Grelle won the state title in the 880-yard dash.
"I was lucky to win it that year," he said. "It was just exciting to catch this kid (Bob Drynan) from Albany. And then my senior year, I was under two minutes and nobody else in the state had ever broken two minutes for 50 years."
Later that year, Grelle finished sixth overall in the 1954 state cross country meet, helping lead the Cardinals to an impressive team title.
Back on the track in the spring of '55, Grelle won another state title in the 880, finishing in a state record time 1:58.0. The fourth-place finisher was a Cleveland High School senior named Phil Knight.
And it was Knight who teamed up with Grelle at the University of Oregon, as the pair lettered the same three seasons (1957, '58, '59) with the Ducks.
Choosing a college
"I went down to Corvallis and met the coach in 1956," Grelle said. "He was also the A.D. (athletic director)?at the time. But I was pretty sure I wanted to go to Oregon. (Bill) Bowerman didn't recruit me, though. He didn't believe in that."
The Bowerman Style
Bowerman coached the Oregon track team from 1949 to 1973. In the late 1960s, "Bill Dellinger was his assistant, and Dellinger and Kenny Moore went down to Coos Bay when Steve Prefontaine was already setting national high school records," Grelle said. Bowerman had never talked to Pre, but he was begged by Dellinger to send him a letter, so he did.
"And it was just a polite, flowery letter. It said 'If you decide on going to Oregon, we're sure you will have a good career.' It didn't promise anything."
When it came to running at Oregon, you went to Bowerman, Bowerman didn't come to you.
Another favorite Grelle story involves Marty Liquori, the American middle distance runner from the 1960s and '70s.
"There were three high schoolers in the '60s who ran 4-minute miles, only three," Grelle said, "and no high schooler ran a 4-minute mile for the next 37 years."
"Jim Ryun in '64, Tim Danielson in '66 (went to BYU and ran well, 4:01s and 4:02s) and the third one, the very next year, was Marty Liquori."
Ryun "went under four minutes his junior year in high school and beat me in the Olympic Trials in 1964," Grelle said.
Liquori became the third prep runner to break the 4-minute mile, and Grelle was there, too, at the 1967 AAU Championships in Bakersfield, Calif.
"So Liquori breaks four minutes. Roscoe Divine was at Oregon, and he was under four minutes; and Dave Wilborn was a junior or senior, and I had been out of school for six years. I caught Wilborn at the finish line, he set a school record of 3:56.2, and I ran a 3:56.1, and Wilborn said, ;I thought you were an old man! How did you beat me?' "
After the race (which aired on ABC's Wide World of Sports, and in which Ryun set a world record in 3:51.1), "all three of us took Marty Liquori over to meet Bowerman, and I knew what would happen," Grelle said.
"Bowerman is sitting in the front row, and here's Marty Liquori, who's just placed in the mile in 3:58.2 or something like that, and Bowerman said, "Where did you go to high school son?" And Marty said, "Essex Catholic in New Jersey, sir." And Bowerman said, "You should go to college back there. There's some good schools around there, like Villanova." And that's where (Liquori) went.
"Bowerman didn't want to recruit anyone to come to Oregon. He didn't want any crybabies who would complain about the weather."
Grelle the Olympian
After graduating from Oregon in 1959, Grelle set his sites on the 1960 Summer Olympics, in Rome.
At the Olympic Trials, held in Palo Alto, Calif., Grelle finished second (3:47.4) to Oregon teammate Dyrol Burleson (3:46.9) in the 1,500-meter final, qualifying him for the USA Olympic team.
Once in Rome, Grelle finished second in Heat 2 of the preliminaries, running a 3:43.65, to qualify for one of the nine spots in the finals.
Herb Elliott of Australia won the gold in a world record time 3:35.6, Burleson placed sixth in 3:40.9, and Grelle finished eighth in 3:45.0.
"I would have rather gone to the Olympics in 1964 than '60," Grelle said. "Burleson and I went in 1960, and we hadn't been beaten by anyone else the two years prior to that. So it was kind of a foregone conclusion that we'd make it."
"There were three or four guys who were close for third, but they weren't close to us. I'm not bragging; it was just that we were that far ahead. When we got to Rome, I was lucky to make the finals."
"There was a nine-man final, and there were maybe 15 guys who had faster times than I did. So I felt lucky to make the finals."
In 1964, "I was running a lot faster, and Ryun hadn't beaten me all year," recalled Grelle. At the time, Ryun was a 17-year-old junior at Wichita (Kan.) East High School.
At the Olympic Trials in Los Angeles, "I kind of forgot about (Ryun), and I tried to 'win' the race, because we were all real close.
"Archie San Romani (another Oregon grad) took the lead with a quarter-mile to go. Most of our races that year were real slow, with a real fast finish. So you don't necessarily get the best miler, you get the best sprinter. But it's awfully hard to lead the whole thing."
The result. in an amazingly close finish, Burleson again won the trials in 3:41.2, and he was followed by Tom O'Hara (3:41.5), Ryun (3:41.9) and Grelle (3:41.9). San Romani took fifth in 3:43.
Although Ryun and Grelle officially had the same time, Ryun edged Grelle by an inch at the finish line. Ryun went with the USA team to Tokyo, Grelle;s Olympic experience was over.
But his competitive days were far from finished.
On June 18, 1965 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Grelle lowered the U.S. record in the mile to 3:55.4. Nine days later, Ryun broke that record by a tenth of a second.
It must be the shoes, or maybe not
When Grelle was running, "American track shoes were terrible, even when I was in school," Grelle said of the early days. "You couldn't get Adidas shoes anywhere in Oregon, but Bowerman got Phil Knight and me and a couple other guys together, and said he had a source in San Francisco (Clifford Severn" , at the time the distributor of Adidas shoes on the West Coast). Severn went on to become the founder and chief of Koolaburra footwear.
"You had your choice of everything, even the colors," Grelle said, and Adidas it was.
This was in the prewaffle iron days of Bowerman, who eventually designed the sole of a shoe (with the help of a waffle iron) that became the Nike running shoe.
"Before that, we only had Spot-Bilt or Spaulding, with a stiff leather sole. Adidas was a big improvement, with the way it fit your foot."
"I have some pictures of Phil Knight in Adidas shoes, and I've told him, ‘I'm going to blow that picture up and send it in to the paper, and they'll use it."
Which leads Grelle into more stories on Knight.
"He's a very funny guy," Grelle said of the Nike co-founder and chairman. "And he has a mind that remembers everything. He's quick. He loves good jokes."
"He's kind of like Bowerman in a way. He'll correct you on something, and you're not sure if he's right, because the only person who knew the story was Bowerman, and he's been dead for years."
An example, Grelle remembers, was a mile relay he ran for the Ducks, along with Knight, in a meet against the University of Washington.
"We weren't quarter-milers, and we were running against the University of Washington, and their miler was running the anchor leg," said Grelle, who ran 'unofficially' a 47.5 leg to help Oregon win the race.
"Somebody asked me a few years ago what my fastest quartermile was, and I said '47.5 on a relay.' Knight was right there, and said, "You know what Bowerman did? He gave us all 50-flat, and there was only 47.5 seconds left, so that's what you got." " I don't know if that's true or not."
On Ducks and Rupp
"Vin Lananna (Oregon associate athletic director) is a very good coach," Grelle said. "He was a distance coach at Stanford for 10 years (where Lananna led his cross country and track teams to five NCAA team championships), and they'd always beat Oregon in all the distance races."
Galen Rupp is just one of Oregon's latest success stories, when the former Duck took the silver medal in the 10,000 meters in last summer's London Olympics.
"(Alberto) Salazar has done a great job with him," Grelle said of Rupp's coach. "I was thinking that he didn't have enough speed to a sprint finish, but I was impressed with Salazar's ability to get more out of him, by starting his kick a lot earlier. That's gutsy. He's not shear speed. I was sort of shocked that he got second in the Olympics."
The Grelle Legend
When Oregon's milers/1,500-meter runners finished first or second (or both) in the NCAA Championships for nine straight seasons, Grelle played a significant role. He was called 'the most durable' of the Ducks' string of distance standouts, finishing his career as a three-time all-American.
From goducks.com, Grelle “was at his best in the big meets, streaking to runner-up honors in the 1957 and ’58 NCAA meets despite not winning the conference title either year. He swept all of the major races the next year, adding the national mile title to his collegiate spoils. He went on to finish second in the Pan American Games in the 1,500 that summer, then made the U.S. Olympic Team and won the AAU championship in 1960. He also won the Pan Am title in 1963 and two AAU indoor mile crowns later in his career.”
His sophomore and junior years at Oregon, Grelle placed second in the NCAA mile, and won the event his senior year (1959) in 4:03.9.
In 1963, he set the U.S. two-mile record in 8:25.2. He also won the prestigious Mt. SAC Relays mile in 1962, '64, '65 and the three-mile in 1966.
Grelle ran his first sub-4-minute mile at Mt. SAC in 1962 (3:59.9). The meet record stood until 1998.
In 1981, Grelle was inducted into the State of Oregon Sports Hall of Fame.
Our heroes are leaving us. Did I know him? No, but I feel the loss. He was a part of what was an important time in my life. Who will be next? Hope it's not you or me. Roy
Fast forward to 1965 by which time I was living in Victoria. I heard
of a big meet in Vancouver in June of that year and because ( largely) Peter
Snell was entered I went to see it . It was held at Empire Stadium famous
for being the site of the “Miracle Mile” with bannister beating Landy in the
(then) Empire Games. Also in the field were Grelle, Cary Weisiger . Tony
Harris of the UK and a number of local athletes. Naturally most eyes were
on Snell and when after a lap or two he was falling well back some of the lesser
mortals in the crowd voiced their disappointment rather stridently. It
transpired after the race that he was suffering from a bad case of food
poisoning and should never have been running but did not want to let the crowd
down. He finished well back in last place . Meanwhile Grelle was
busy winning the race in an American record and I fear I can hardly remember
much of his performance wherein he won by some 7 seconds.
It was the only time I saw him run but that was likely one of the very
fastest miles I have ever seen.
