Career
Lydiard presided over New Zealand's golden era in world track and field during the 1960s sending Murray Halberg, Peter Snell and Barry Magee to the podium at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. Under Lydiard's tutelage Snell went on to double-gold at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Athletes subsequently coached by him or influenced by his coaching methods included such luminaries as Rod Dixon, John Walker, Dick Quax and Dick Tayler.
The work he did in the late 1960s in Finland is generally acknowledged to have led to the renaissance in Finnish distance running in the 1970s (with Pekka Vasala winning gold in the 1500 metres at the 1972 Munich Olympics and Lasse Virén winning gold in both the 5000 metres and 10,000 metres at the 1972 Olympics and the 1976 Montreal Olympics).
When Olavi Suomalainen won the 1972 Boston Marathon, Lydiard was awarded Finland's White Cross for his efforts.
Lydiard constantly clashed with unimaginative and officious athletics administrators in his native New Zealand and in the countries that called upon his strong personality and coaching expertise to establish national athletics programmes.
The marathon-conditioning phase of Lydiard's system is known as base training, as it creates the foundation for all subsequent training. Lydiard's emphasis on an endurance base for his athletes, combined with his introduction of periodization in the training of distance runners, were the decisive elements in the world-beating success of the athletes he coached or influenced.
The Lydiard system has been challenged since it was formalized and crystallized in the early 1960s. The two main sources of criticism of Lydiard emanate from the English coach, Frank Horwill, and the US coach, Jack Daniels.
Nearly every successful athletics coach or athlete active in the world today consciously or unconsciously emulates Lydiard's training system by laying an endurance base and making use of periodization for peak performance.
As recently as 2009, Lydiard's training methods were also credited as the catalyst for the qualification of an unprecedented three South African male athletes, Juan Van Deventer, Pieter Van Der Westhuizen and Johan Cronje, for the 1500 metres for the 2009 Track and Field Championships in Berlin.