Arch Jelley: 'Who would nominate a 98 year old'

Whether it is Olympians or card players asking for Arch Jelley's advice the coaching legend says he takes the same approach - with similar success.

Jelley is made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his work as a coach and an administrator in athletics and bridge.

"I wondered who on Earth could have nominated a 98-year-old coach, I haven't been coaching runners for a couple of years and now I just coach a few bridge players, but it's a very high honour and I appreciate that," Jelley said.

Jelley's background as a runner and time as a school teacher contributed to a successful athletics coaching career that spanned more than 60 years.

"I just more or less applied the same principles that I did to teaching to when I was coaching runners," Jelley said.

"I was influenced a lot by Arthur Lydiard of course, as were many other New Zealand coaches, and I used his principles and then threw in a few ideas of my own and I started producing some very good runners."

Twenty of the athletes he coached represented New Zealand, with 12 competing either in the Olympics or World Championships.

Although Jelley was reluctant to pinpoint one athlete who made the most impact, it would be hard to go past Sir John Walker's influence on Jelley's coaching career.

"He was a fantastic athlete, he was always getting injured though so it stopped him winning more races but he was a great person to coach, he was always there, always doing his best whether it was training or racing," Jelley said of Walker who won gold at the 1976 Olympics in the 1500 metres and also became the first person to run a mile in less than 3 minutes 50 seconds.

"But there were many many others that I can remember. I'm sort of known because I've coached a few very good runners but most of the runners I coached were club runners a few hundred probably and when they do well you get just as much satisfaction out of their success."

Other leading athletes coached by Jelley included Neville Scott, a 1500m finalist at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games three mile bronze medallist, as well as Seoul Olympic 3000m runner Chrissie Pfitzinger, two-time Olympic distance runner Robbie Johnston, 1987 World Championship marathoner Hazel Stewart, 1990 Commonwealth 10,000m bronze medallist Barbara Moore, 1978 Commonwealth Games middle-distance representatives Dennis Norris and Alison Wright and former US mile record-holder Steve Scott, whom he guided to fifth at the 1988 Olympic 1500m final.

Despite retiring from athletics coaching in 2000, following the death of his first wife, Jelley returned in 2005, at the age of 93, to coach middle-distance runner Hamish Carson to the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Olympic Games postponement 'very very difficult'

Outside of coaching individual athletes Jelley was a manager of the 1976 and 1984 Olympic Games teams, so he had sympathy for athletes and their coaches who faced the postponement of the Tokyo Olympic Games by one year.

He said it would be "very very difficult" for runners who had planned on peaking in 2020 to replicate that a year later.

"To win an Olympic gold you've got to be at your very best for about three and a half minutes once in every 1000 or so days, so to win a gold you've got to have the talent but you've got to have a lot of luck as well," the former Athletics New Zealand president said.

"I know New Zealand hasn't got many top athletes now compared to what we used to have but we've still got Nick Willis who's 37 and he's been a fantastic runner and ambassador for New Zealand.

"He's been desperately unlucky not to have won a gold, he's run in an age when often it's not a level playing field and quite a few of the people that he's run against, they've been banned for doping."

Beyond Willis, Jelley had praise for the next generation coming through and admitted several of them had stopped by his West Auckland home in recent years to get some advice.

"There are some really excellent young runners around, just as good as they've ever been, and I think it was Arthur Lydiard who used to say there is champions everywhere, and he is quite right, there's champions everywhere if they get the right training and the right encouragement."

The coaching connection

Jelley retired from teaching in the 1990s as a "young fella" in his 70s and his then wife Rachel knew he was a keen card player and encouraged him to attend the Mt Albert Bridge Club to help pass some time.

Rachel was not a card player - "she never quite mastered playing the game of Snap with her grandchildren - they always won," Jelley quipped.

But he found another avenue for his competitive spirit and coaching prowess.

Jelley has stuck with bridge teaching the game for the last 25 years, with his second wife Jean, and said he used the same technique to develop card players as he did runners - or any other athlete.

"When I'm teaching bridge or I'm teaching anything, I'm not that serious and it's a game to me, we just have a lot of fun when we are playing and teaching and I've always been like that.

"If you're teaching people to play bridge and you're playing against them and you beat them, you get a bit of satisfaction but if they beat you, you can say 'it was because of my good teaching', so you can't lose."

Not only was Jelley a bridge tutor he was also president of the Mt Albert club for 10 years and helped fundraise for and project manage the construction of new club rooms.

Jelley's knack for coaching extended to many other sports before he moved on to bridge players.

During his 20 years as principal at Sunnybrae Normal School on Auckland's North Shore, he coached rugby, swimming and girls' softball and he ran several coaching courses nationally and internationally, most recently a workshop tour with Athletics New Zealand in 2012.

The Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit is not Jelley's first honour, he was also made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1982.