Pairing Great Coaches with Great Talents

[Kevin Richardson]

I have been thinking about this for a bit, this morning. What if you could take a great coach and pair him/her with a great athlete, regardless of time? Imagine Arthur Lydiard working with today's distance runners. Or Clyde Hart having a chance to work with Lee Evans, Tommy Smith, or John Carlos.

Unleash your imagination and give us some idea as to what your ideal combinations might have been........

[Mighty Favog]

Sorry to rain on your parade, but I think Lydiard WAS working with the best. In my mind Peter Snell is the equal of any other great half-miler who has ever lived. Sure, his times are inferior to those of others, but consider that Snell ran 1:44.3 on an undersized grass track. Put him on mondo with a good pacemaker, race him against the world's best a half-dozen times in a summer, and 1:42 was easily within his reach.

Ditto for Evans & Smith. Clyde Hart is a great coach, but Bud Winter may have been the greatest sprint coach of all time.

[79.]

X-man with John SMITH, who is also among the World top-3 400m
coaches...

[tafnut]

The mind reels with possibilities. And not even with famous coaches. Imagine Klech with Moses, or Sellers with Stones, or Aries Merritt with Skeets. None of them are coaches, but always struck me as having totally mastered their events, to the point that they could make ANYONE better.

[gh]

Except that the universality of great coaches is that they tended not to be great athletes themselves. One could even posit an inverse relationship in that department.

[Mighty Favog]

Agreed. John Wooden is almost completely alone in being a HOF player and coach.

[G.Ahearn]

Walter George + Arthur Lydiard = <3:50.0 mile.

[tafnut]

Except that the universality of great coaches is that they tended not to be great athletes themselves. One could even posit an inverse relationship in that department.

John Smith does OK. Earl Bell too. Michael Carter coaches his daughter. Stones would be a helluva coach!

[bambam]

Agreed. John Wooden is almost completely alone in being a HOF player and coach.

Lenny Wilkens also in the Basketball HOF as player and coach

[exNLAC]

It already happened...

Apart from the Lydiard/Snell pairing, there was the Cerutty/Elliot team.

[Kevin Richardson]

While there are a few examples of great players transitioning to great coaches, I agree that there does not seem to be a positive correlation. in my own case, any success I enjoyed was due to me learning the proper techniques, and more importantly, learning how to apply them. For that reason, I have been much more effective in my limited coaching experiences than I was as a runner/jumper.

In other sports, I have seen that the truly gifted athletes often have a tough time coaching "mortal" athletes.

[79.]

Trevor GRAHAM with a non tellezian Leroy BURRELL may be one day en route for a sub-9"75...

[tafnut]

Trevor GRAHAM with a non tellezian Leroy BURRELL may be one day en route for a sub-9"75...

I can't even begin to fathom what you are saying there. Certainly NOT that Tellez prevented Burrell from being as good as he could have been with Graham.

[eldrick]

Trevor GRAHAM with a non tellezian Leroy BURRELL may be one day en route for a sub-9"75...

what couda graham done with a non tellezian marsh in an og semi of '92 ?

[tafnut]

Trevor GRAHAM with a non tellezian Leroy BURRELL may be one day en route for a sub-9"75...

what couda graham done with a non tellezian marsh in an og semi of '92 ?

When did Tellez suddenly become persona non grata? When he trained Lewis he seemed just fine.