Elliott Has No Thoughts Of Attempting Mile Record

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29783, 28 March 1962, Page 11

Elliott Has No Thoughts Of Attempting Mile Record

r LONDON March 21. r A CONSIDERABLE period “ may elapse before H. J. Elliott, the Australian Olympic gold medallist, attempts to regain the world record for the mile. recently broken by New Zealand's Olympic 800 metres champion, P. G. Snell.

Rumours throughout Britain and most of the Commonwealth that he was to compete against Snell at White City, Loncton. later this season were completely false, Elliott told me in a personal interview this afternoon. ‘‘l would like to run against Snell in the mile but I am not fit enough at the moment,” he said. Studies First

Asked when he was likely to be fit enough to race against Snell, Elliott replied that he did not expect to get back into serious training until he had finished his academic studies at Cambridge University, probably In about a year and a half However, if he managed to get a chance to do some serious training before then, he would definitely take advantage of it. Elliott admitted that he was still doing “quite a bit” of training, several miles each night to keep in trim. He emphasised hat he had plenty of time for training seriously but when be did he was too tired to study properly. At Dublin, immediately after the Rome Olympic Games. Elliott said he had beaten the New Zealander over the mile but at toe time Snell had lacked confidence in himself This was the only time he had raced against Snell.

Explaining why it would be useless to race against

Snell, Elliott said that since the race at Dublin Snell had done more than a year’s solid training and he had done nothing. Snell also obviously had plenty of confidence now. •

Specially written Jot “The Press” by R. O. DEW

“Snell has been doing a tremendous amount of training and I was not surprised when he broke the world record for the mile," Elliott said. He believed that Snell was doing 15 miles work a

night—about four more than he did. Elliott described the New Zealand champion as an amazing runner “of incredible ability.” He had a tremendous circulatory system, he said. New Zealand, with Snell, M. Halberg and B. A. Magee, was undoubtedly the greatest distance country in the world.

There had to be a reason for all the long distance runners coming from New Zealand and Australia he said. Both had very good climates for outdoor work and this could be one of the reasons. Another reason was that both countries were relatively young and less inclined to be tied to what had happened before. In an invitation half-mile race at the Sevenoaks School, one of Englands oldest public schools, yesterday, Elliott was only able to fill fourth place behind the school’s top quarter-milers running in three relay teams of two. The winning time was Imin 56sec but Elliott, running in bare feet, could only record slightly better than 2min for the distance, much slower than his best.

Elliott is very popular with the younger generation in England and is always ready to pass on his knowledge to anyone interested. The advent of Snell has not caused his popularity, both as a runner and as a person, to diminish in any way. If anything, it has merely renewed interest and aroused speculation as to who really is the world’s greatest miler.