New Zealand Great And Three-Time Olympic Champion Dies

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

Peter Snell, who helped drive middle-distance running globally in the early 1960s, died Friday, a week before what would have been his 81st birthday. 

The IAAF posted an obitiuary.

Snell won the 1960 Olympic 800-meter title and then ruled the 1964 Games in Tokyo by winning both the 800 meters and 1,500 meters. In order to win both gold medals, he won six races in eight days. He retired in 1965 at age 26.

Snell's incredible speed was honed in collaboration with the pioneering distance running coach Arthur Lydiard, and the results helped usher in a new age of training and performance that was studied and copied around the world. 

In 2000, Snell was named New Zealands's greatest sportsman of the century.