FOR listeners Down Under, the BBC news on the morning of September 3, 1960, contained a stunning headline: “At the Olympic Games, New Zealand has won two gold medals.”

New Zealanders had dared to hope for one medal, from the 5,000 metres runner Murray Halberg. But when a raw 21-year-old named Peter Snell snatched the 800 metres title on the same afternoon in Rome, the excitement was almost too much. And athletes around the world quickly deduced that the twin successes must have had a common denominator.

The catalyst was Arthur Lydiard, a 43-year-old former marathon runner and coach who was barely known in his own country. Today, it would be fair to say that few New Zealanders have had so great an influence on the world — thanks not only to that golden hour in Rome (and more glories in Tokyo four years later) but to his role as the instigator of the jogging movement.

Before the Rome Olympics, the great exemplars of middle-distance running had been the Finns in the 1920s and Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia in the 1950s. But their successes appeared to be the consequence of exceptional athletes undertaking unprecedented levels of training rather than the achievement of their coaches. Lydiard was different: he trained alongside his protégés, asking them to do no more or fewer miles than he, and led them through a regime that intrigued the world. It was LSD — long slow distance — for everyone. Even a track runner as heavily muscled as Snell was expected to undertake marathon-type mileage; the honing would come later, on the track. The logic was perfectly demonstrated in Rome by Snell, who was sharpened, rather than jaded, by three races preceding the final.

Lydiard, as a marathon runner, was twice New Zealand champion and placed 12th in the 1950 Empire Games. Not greatly talented, but very determined, he attracted scepticism with his experiments with exceptional mileage loads and training frequency. Like many pioneers, that scepticism simply spurred him to prove his critics wrong. A man of nuggety build, freckled face and intense eyes, he was someone to be challenged at one’s peril. But his running peers also recognised that his energy and drive were far greater than theirs, as he combined jobs in a shoe factory and on a night-time milk round, and built a cottage, as well as training harder than anyone.

He was always dogmatic, and some of his ideas and convictions seemed too simple. He would readily accept statements by others as facts, and expect them to extend him the same courtesy. But that unquestioning certainty provided another dimension to his success: simple conviction. Typically, he would say to his athletes: “It’s just a fact . . . You’ve put in the work . . . You know, you can win that race.”

Sensitive streaks in both men led to a somewhat uneven relationship with Snell, a runner whose great ability might well not have been realised without Lydiard’s driving force. There was a year-long rift before the two got together for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Snell was hammered into sensational form for the 800 and 1,500 metres, taking gold medals in both, and winning the 1500 metre final in what one onlooker called a “God-like” manner.

Lydiard had done his Olympic coaching as an individual on the fringe of the team and, in a country hidebound by amateur attitudes, was forced to go overseas to earn employment as a coach. His first appointment was in Mexico, but it was during a three-year engagement in Finland that he found the appreciation — and the readiness for hard work — that his own commitment required. The splendid renaissance of Finland’s runners in the 1972 and 1976 Olympics owed much to Lydiard.

Once back in his home town of Auckland, however, Lydiard made what is perhaps his most far-reaching contribution. He had become increasingly interested in physiology, and, encouraged by progressive-minded cardiologists, he encouraged post-coronary patients to take up running. He preached running to sedentary business executives, and from that came, in February 1962, the first outing for an Auckland group of “joggers”. It was a quaint name, but it caught on. A visiting athletics coach from Oregon, Bill Bowerman, took note, and jogging soon began to spread across America; President Kennedy called on his nation to get fit, and the rest is history. A Round-the-Bays run in Auckland attracted 1,200 participants in 1973, a figure that swelled to 80,000 by 1982. It was the first fun run, and the precursor of the big city marathons.

It seems ironic, in view of Lydiard’s convictions, that he was employed, in the early 1960s, by Rothmans. Snell was also then engaged by the tobacco company, though he moved on to work in Houston, doing medical research into the effects of exercise. Lydiard was also in that city, as part of a United States lecture tour, when he died of a suspected heart attack last week. Coincidentally, Snell was booked to speak about Lydiard later this week in Atlantic City. His address had a title that succinctly embodied the Lydiard method: Why slow running makes you fast.

Lydiard was married three times. His third wife, Joelyne, a runner 48 years his junior, survives him, along with a son and daughter from his first marriage.

Arthur Lydiard, athletics coach, was born on July 6 1917. He died on December 11, 2004, aged 87.