Percy Wells Cerutty

Percy Wells Cerutty is best known as the eccentric coach who helped take Herb Elliott to victory in the 1500m at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Postal worker turned athletics guru, Cerutty revolutionised running training in Australia - most famously by making his athletes run up and down sand dunes, run extraordinarily long distances, eat natural foods and above all, to develop a strong belief in their own ability.
What is not so well known is that he was very influential in the development of both marathoning and ultra running in Australia.
Percy Cerutty was born in Melbourne on 10 January 1895. He was sickly as a child, developing pneumonia and a variety of other ills. As a youth, he dabbled at football and cricket, but soon found that team sports never suited his individualistic streak. He tried boxing, cycling and swimming without success and eventually turned to athletics where he showed some early promise. He joined the Ennismore Athletic Club in 1913 and won his second race, a mile, in 5 minutes 10 seconds. By 1914, WW1 had broken out and his application as a volunteer for armed service was rejected, for failing to meet minimum physical standards. He improved his running, achieving 4:32 for the mile in 1919. However, his bronchial problems were not helped by his addiction to smoking. He had bad teeth and was beginning to suffer from regular migraines. He had some reasonable expectations as an athlete but, with deteriorating health, he virtually dropped out of athletics in 1919 – 20, at the age of 24 - 25.
As was normal for Percy he threw all of his energies into whatever project he undertook. He became a telephone technician with the Government telephone service, the then PMG, and later embarked on a business venture involving the purchase and renovation of houses. However, his health was extremely poor and continued to deteriorate.
By 1938 Percy’s health was at its lowest ebb. He had been seen by various doctors about his poor state of health, which centred on his digestive system, but to no avail. By 1939 his weight had dropped to 45 kg. He suffered terribly from migraines and his smoking habit had escalated to three to four packets of cigarettes a day. This, combined with his obsessive-compulsive nature, all led to him having a complete mental, physical and emotional breakdown. He was consigned to bed, visited by doctors of the day, who gave him virtually six months to live. He eventually was seen by a Dr Ray Killmier who told him that there was no simple diagnosis and that he had to heal himself.

This was the defining moment in Cerutty's life. He took himself off all prescribed medication and embarked upon a radical journey of self healing. He obtained a medical certificate giving him 6 months’ leave from work to enable his recovery. He gave up smoking cigarettes; said by him to have been the hardest thing he ever had to do and fasted for three days. He then began a steady intake of foods, substituting largely raw vegetables and fruit for “lots of red meat and butter.” It took him one week before he could get to the front door of his house and yet another week before he could make it to the front gate. After three weeks he managed a half mile walk around the block. A few weeks later he walked a mile and a half to the Caulfield racecourse where he was inspired by the action of champion racehorse Ajax. On his way home he mimicked the action of the great horse and actually ran for the first time in years.
For the next three years Percy rejected anything cooked or processed. He ate Muesli (which he prepared himself from John Bull oats, sultanas, raisins, walnuts, sliced banana – eaten without milk), raw eggs and large portions of fresh fruits. With the elimination of animal fats from his diet, the turnaround in his health was dramatic.
Percy became an avid reader, reading everything he could lay his hands on. One of the major influences on his life during this period of recuperation was from the writings of Arthur Newton. Newton had embarked on an athletic career at the age of 39 and it is legendary how he went to South Africa and won 5 out of 6 Comrades marathons (~ 90 km) between 1922 and 1927. Newton also had pioneered the London to Brighton race, a distance of 50 miles. Percy obtained Newton’s book, Running, first published in 1935 and studied it closely, over and over again.

Percy’s sanity depended upon exercise. By the end of 1939 he felt strong enough to join the Melbourne Walking Club. By the end of 1940 he completed his first long walk in the high country, a distance of 113 kms. On a cool spring evening in 1942, as a sprightly white-haired man with piercing blue eyes, he strode into the Malvern Harriers Club announcing to the young athletes gathered there ‘I’ve come down to have a run with you. I used to be a member here’. Of course everyone stared blankly as no-one there could remember him. Almost 25 years had passed since he was last there and he was by then 47. In his first competitive race upon his return he ran the mile, off a handicap of 240 yards, in 4:50 placing second. In his next race he improved on that by 25 seconds. And so he returned to the sport of his youth, this time applying himself fully to its study.
According to Fred Lester, secretary for some 35 years of the Victorian Marathon Club, Percy founded the club in 1942, acting as both President and Secretary for the first 5 years. During this period he was instrumental in inspiring several athletes to train and contest marathons. He inaugurated the run around ‘the tan’, the track around the perimeter of the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, still used for training and races to this day. Percy’s house was nearby. One of his former top athletes, John Landy, Governor of Victoria at the time of writing (May 2005), has his house (Government House) within it. He used to scream at Landy to run faster and faster up Anderson Street Hill (part of the Tan circuit) as he thought him too lazy and lacking the killer instinct.
In 1945, Percy ran 1,674 miles in racing and training. Once, he disappeared for weeks on end, undertaking a 500 mile hike that took him to the summit of Mt Kosciuszko in a raging blizzard. On another trek into East Gippsland he ran 100 miles from Cann River towards Melbourne in 23 ¾ hours (23 November 1945). On 29 December 1945 at age 50, he ran a marathon on the Albert Park circuit in 3:02:20 and continued on to complete 30 miles which he achieved in 3:34:06.
Percy went on to become one of the greatest athletics coaches of all time, with his famous base in the sand dunes of Portsea on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne. His methods were extreme and he was rarely without controversy. He was far ahead of his time with weight training, diet & nutrition, sports psychology, running barefoot up and down sand-dunes; and long runs for middle distance athletes, a practice later adopted by Arthur Lydiard. Percy was the first coach to insist that 100 miles of training per week was a necessary pre-requisite for both middle distance athletes and marathoners.
Cerutty was much more than an athlete and coach. He was also a teacher, philosopher, visionary, a pioneering motivator and maker (or breaker) of men. Above all, he was inspirational. He was a poet and author, writing and publishing some six books. A quote from the first stanza of "The Distance Runner"
“Running: running: hear the beat!
Busting lungs and pounding feet.
Straining: gaining: 'til your done:
Or you have the race well-won.
Racing: Pacing: rather die:
Than give up or let them by.”
One of the athletes inspired by Cerutty was a 17-year-old Western Australian schoolboy champion, Herb Elliott. Cerutty had met Elliott in Perth and announced that he could have Elliott running sub 4 minute miles within two years. At Melbourne's Olympic Park two years later, Elliott took on Australia's best, beating the highly fancied Merv Lincoln.
There have been many great moments in Australian sport but few have rivalled Elliott's performance in the 1500 metres at the 1960 Rome Olympics. More than 90,000 spectators watched in sheer amazement as the young Australian powered away in the final lap from the star-studded field. Elliott went on to win by more than twenty metres, and his world record was hailed by experts as the most emphatic in Olympic history. Elliott was never beaten over the mile or 1500 metres in senior competition, retiring when he was just 22 years of age.
Until his death on 15 August 1975, Cerutty lived at Portsea where his radical teachings impacted significantly on all major areas of Australian sport, including, swimming, tennis, cycling, and football. Percy subjected his charges to three training sessions daily.
According to a former Cerutty protégé Neil Padley, the long run on Saturdays or Sundays was from Frankston to Portsea, a distance then of 35 miles. This originated when Percy tipped his athletes out of the car at Frankston and told them to run all the way back to Portsea, which they were required to complete within 5 hours. This was sometimes done as a form of punishment for not putting in or for misbehavior. It is said that on more than one occasion Herb Elliot himself was subjected to this type of punishment for "playing up". Alternatively, Percy had his runners run along the clifftops and beaches from Portsea to Cape Schank and back, also a distance of 35 miles. The target time for this particular run was 7 hours. Percy frequently did these runs himself, more so in the early years.
There is now an annual race from Frankston to Portsea to commemorate Percy, his achievements and affection for that particular training run. This race is the oldest surviving ultra in Australia, having been conducted annually since 1973. Its race director of many years is Kevin Cassidy, editor of Ultramag.
Several of the ultra feats of George Perdon (to be featured in a coming issue of Ultramag) were breaking ultra point to point records set by Percy in the 1950’s and 60’s.
Cerutty biographer Graem Sims (“Why Die”, published 2003) is in possession of Percy’s running diaries which reveal that he ran from Portsea to Melbourne (60 miles), on 23 November 1946 in 8:28, going through the 50 mile mark in 7:00:15. Percy on occasion would have his top athletes do this run, insisting that they do it within 8 hours. On a training run of 30 miles Percy covered the distance in 3hr34'. Also, in 1946 he completed some unfinished business; that of breaking 5 minutes for the mile. He achieved 4:53 – at 51 years of age!
The diaries also reveal that Percy was contemplating a run from Melbourne to Sydney in 1965 (at age 70) in which he wanted to break the then record. Incidentally, the record was 12 days 13 hours 43 mins for the 563 mile journey (Hume Highway) set in 1931 by Alf Robinson. It is interesting that Robinson’s run followed the Trans America Races of 1928 and 1929. The American races were contested by Australians Mike McNamara and Herbert Hedemann who have already been inducted into the AURA Hall of Fame.
Percy Cerutty’s influence in Ultrarunning in Australia was profound.
Percy became good friends with Arthur Newton and another famous ultra runner Pete Gavuzzi, and often met with them during his many trips to Europe. The Road Runners Club (UK) trophy for winning its long distance races of 100 miles and 24 hours is called the Percy Cerutty Cup. This undoubtedly stems for the pioneering working Cerutty did for Ultrarunning in Australia and his training techniques for middle distance runners reflect his ultradistance background and philosophy.
American author Gary Walton said of Cerutty: “In the 23 years Cerutty actively coached at Portsea, 30 world record breakers followed his methods and fell victim to the Cerutty virus. Some men thought him a crank, many viewed him skeptically, but all agreed he was unique. A philosopher and a poet, an athlete and coach, and above all an individual, Percy Cerutty was a force in athletics like few others.