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Overview
This scrap book was compiled by Dave Gunton of the Auckland Baptist Harrier Club from 1950 to 1961. He collected newspaper cuttings about club races and harrier events, programmes and photographs, inter-city competitions and trips, social events and outings, and ribbons in the club’s colours of red and white.
The scrapbook includes newspaper cuttings about the achievements of Peter Snell and Murray Halberg at the Rome Olympics in 1960 when they won gold medals within an hour of each other (for the 800 metre and 5000 metre events respectively). Snell and Halberg were pupils of the master coach Arthur Lydiard who was responsible for the finest era in New Zealand athletics from 1951 to 1966. The scrapbook contains a cutting about Lydiard’s methods.
The scrapbook also includes the programme for the opening of the Lovelock Track in Mt Roskill, Auckland, in 1961, which was the first all-weather athletics track in New Zealand, where prominent middle and long distance runners could train and compete.
The scrapbook speaks to the popularity of middle and long distance running in New Zealand during the 1950s-60s period, and the foundation such grassroots clubs laid from the 1920s onwards, contributing to New Zealand’s successes on the world stage in the 1950s and 1960s.