Twenty-five years after his death in 1975, Percy Cerutty’s contribution to Australian sport would be finally recognised. On a crisp autumn day in 2000, around 120 people gathered at the grassed sports field in Portsea, on the tip of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, to witness its renaming as Percy Cerutty Oval. The memories came flooding back for the Stotan gang who returned to honour him: the oval was where Cerutty had held his captivating midday lectures and demonstrated his wholly original running techniques to thousands of athletes in the 1950s and ’60s. 

A bronze plaque was unveiled by his widow, Nancy – but just as Cerutty’s place in history has been disputed, even this belated recognition would be curiously diminished, the Australian flag drawn back to reveal the “Wells” of his middle name misspelt in perpetuity as “Wills.” 

Similarly, historians have failed to agree on even a definition of Percy Wells Cerutty’s contribution. Impressions traverse the spectrum from genius to charlatan, guru to rogue. Percy contributed to the debate by denouncing most labels attached to him. Was he even a coach? Percy at times claimed he wasn’t, yet allowed himself to be described as a “world-famous coach” on the dust-jackets of the six books he wrote in the 1960s. Certainly, the academic world would disagree with him. The iconic image of him leading a young Herb Elliott in repetition runs up the nearby dunes was chosen for the cover of a history of sports coaching in Australia by academic Murray Phillips, From Sidelines To Centre Field (2000). Yet in the lavish 300-page history sponsored by Athletics Australia, Fields Of Green, Lanes Of Gold (2001), Cerutty rated just four lines. In his day he was the subject of hundreds of articles, but each tended to follow the same tracks, their authors enthralled by his persona and outrageous antics. 

Who was this “eccentric genius”? A clue exists in the sand-dune cemetery of Sorrento, where a quill decorates his marble headstone. Cerutty was a prolific writer. Through his crashing typewriter, Cerutty sought to not only inspire and enthuse, but to liberate humankind. He didn’t just live the healthy life he advocated, turning himself into one of the most extraordinarily fit men for his age on the planet for the last 30 years of his life. He was also a teacher, scientist, philosopher and pioneering motivator.

His own life was his greatest experiment. In 1939, as a 44-year-old telephone technician by day and home renovator by night, his obsessive search for meaning and erratic personality had reduced him to a human skeleton. It was as if Cerutty had collapsed under the strain of his self-interrogation. Doctors gave him two years to live. The advice of one, however, left an impression: “I can’t heal you with medicines, Perce. The mending lies in your own intelligence and desire to live. If you want to do anything about yourself, you’ll do it under your own will and spirit.”  

Having spent the first half of his life reading everything he could find on religion, philosophy and mysticism, he began devouring textbooks on biology, medicine, diet, physiology and psychology. He became convinced it had been the trappings of modern civilisation that had almost finished him. He became vegetarian, eating only uncooked foods, for the next three years. He began lifting heavy weights to build his strength. And he began walking.

Within a year he was trekking through Victoria’s high country and sleeping out in blizzards - “thrusting against Nature”, as he called it - to harden himself. He rejoined the Malvern Harriers Athletics Club after an absence of 25 years, and became an arresting presence on Melbourne’s running tracks throughout the 1940s. For Percy, no race felt far enough. He ran marathons, he ran 100 miles in 24 hours, he ran the 60 miles from Portsea to Melbourne. 

Others were drawn to him, fascinated by his energy and ideas. Percy had discovered his forte: he was a teacher. He developed a repertoire of lectures and demonstrations that astounded and challenged all who saw him.

He would proudly brand his saving philosophy “Stotanism”, a fusion of the ideas espoused in Ancient Greece by the Stoics and Spartans. “A Stotan,” he wrote, “is one who hardens, strengthens, toughens and beautifies the body by consistent habits and regular exercises, which are consciously and irrevocably made part of the life plan of the individual. As well, they will consciously determine that the mind is cultivated upon such abstractions as purity, beauty and logic. Erudition, in as complete a degree as possible, shall be the lifelong aim. Truth, in relation to all aspects of life, the unending search.”

Within a few years of his setting up as a “conditioner of men”, Percy had a band of disciples behind him. Every Australian runner at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 competing from the 800 metres up to the marathon had entered his orbit – including a young runner from Geelong. John Landy would part ways with Cerutty after Helsinki, but his course was set. In 1954, just seven weeks after Briton Roger Bannister’s famous run to break four minutes, Landy would become the second to achieve the milestone, stripping more than 1.5 seconds from Bannister’s mark. Percy’s methods had transformed running training.

The trip to his Portsea camp was made by thousands more from around the world, to hear his ideas, experience the Cerutty diet, lift weights and run. It was “Ceres” on the front gate, “The International Athletics Centre” on the letterhead, built by Percy’s own hands and by those who stayed there from old packing cases and lumber heaved overboard from passing ships. Cerutty’s aspirants trained over sandy circuits through the surrounding ti tree, powered their way up the towering dunes, sped barefoot across neighbouring golf courses, and plunged naked into Bass Strait’s bracing waters. Breakfast was of rolled oats mixed with dried fruits, nuts, wheatgerm and chopped banana, years before it was called muesli. 

His fame reached its zenith when Herb Elliott joined him as an 18-year-old lad from Perth after the Melbourne Olympics in 1956. By 1960, Elliott had won the gold medal in the 1500 metres at the Rome Olympics. The winning margin, of more than 20 metres, has never been surpassed – the most commanding victory in history over the race distance that had become the measure of humans’ physical advance. Yet even as Elliott crossed the line, Percy was being famously wrestled off the arena by police; he’d leapt a fence and a deep moat during the final lap to whip a T-shirt around over his head to urge Herb on.

“Only about ten percent of what he spoke about would’ve been technical track and field talk,” says Elliott, “but just about every word he uttered was aimed at making you into a better athlete. Percy would say that if, through running, you could put yourself outside your comfort zone, then the pain that you suffered and absorbed could bring you close to Christ and other people who’d voluntarily accepted a painful experience. You could lift your mind out to those who were suffering in the world. He constantly challenged you to pursue self-mastery through athletics.”