My time surfing has resulted in some quotes attributed to Herb Elliot. I have copied and pasted some of these quotes. They are interesting.
Post Cambridge Herb
Elliott lived and worked in Perth. He was and still is very successful in
business.
Elliott: There
was no reason for me to continue running. There was no money in it, I had a
family, I wasn’t a wealthy fellow so I needed to go out and get a job.
He attributes his
ability to adjust to working in business to the self-belief installed in him by
Cerutty.
Elliott: When I
first met Cerutty at school, he said ‘what you’re doing is totally trivial,
you’re going round and round in circles and coming back to where you started.
Why would you put aside a large portion of your life for the next four years
for such a trivial achievement?’
And I said ‘I’m
not sure’. And he said ‘I’ll tell you why. Because you’ve got an aptitude (for
running), and if you can use that aptitude to the fullest, you’ll grow into a
better man’.
Elliott: I’d been
brought up a Catholic at Aquinas College in Perth and you’re constantly
confronted by this idea of being a better person. So that appealed to me. So my
motivation was very pure. I wanted to be a better human being. That was my
number one thing.
A point being,
at training you’d be exhausted and you still had a few miles to run but you
knew that was a moment of weakness challenging you. So, if you were going to
grow, your motivation had to be more than just winning or getting money.
Elliott (recently):
I know some of the great AFL coaches who have had success and they concentrate
on the guys being better men and, therefore, ultimately better footballers
rather than just being better footballers.
They develop
players first as men, allowing what they learn to help them with their
particular sport. They’re the ones who get the best results, not the ones who
hammer the idea of just trying to win.
Elliot: It was
just one of those peculiar tricks of fate that I met Percy and certainly his
contribution to my development as a champion athlete was an invaluable and
integral part of it. It wouldn’t have happened without him.
Elliot: From
the first time I met Percy, he excited me as a person. I’m not sure whether it
was a blending of personalities or minds, but the way he spoke appealed to me.
I could feel it stir ambitions in me that must have been already there
somewhere.
Elliot: I
always respected, listened to, learned from and loved Percy.
Elliot: It was
demanding, incredibly so. But also inspirational, natural and beautiful.
Elliot: He was
never terribly interested in what I was doing in my training. He was more
interested in my state of mind.
The Australian
press built a rivalry between Merv Lincoln and Herb Elliot, portraying it as a
feud between coaches Cerutty and Stampfl. Elliott’s training contrasted with
Lincoln’s track-based and closely timed sessions.
Elliott: I had
a genuine sympathy for Merv. While he was plodding his way through monotonous
training sessions, I was galloping over sand-hills…and splashing through the
surf, or frolicking in the beautiful Botanical Gardens.
Cerutty clearly
filled a need in Elliott's life.
Mrs Elliott: We
put Herb in Percy's hands with confidence. That confidence has been well and
truly repaid a million times over. He gave Herb an awful lot more than just
making him stronger. He puts great stress on character. His standards for a man
are very high. Oh, we have had some terrific arguments with him, but he's done
the world for Herb.
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