Coach Who Discovered And Developed Joaquim Cruz, Among Others, Died While Waiting For Kidney Transplant

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

One of the world's leading distances coaches of the 1980s, who mentored an international group of athletes during that period in Eugene, Oregon, died June 30 in Doha, Qatar. 

Luiz de Oliveira was 73 and he was known as a "Coach Without Borders" while he was based in the United States, after bringing the prodigal talent Joaquim Cruz to the University of Oregon in 1983.

Cruz won the 1983 NCAA Division 1 championship in the 800 meters and the following year won the 800/1,500 double. He went from a dominant NCAA meet straight into the Los Angeles Games in 1984 and won the gold medal in the 800 in an Olympic record time of 1:43.00. 

According to an obituary of de Oliveria written by Eugene resident Peter John L. Thompson, a coaching peer in the early 1980s, the Brazilian coach found Cruz on a basketball court as a 12-year old. After persuading him to try track and field, Cruz ran 1:51 for 800 meters and 48.7 for 400 at the age of 15. 

After Cruz gained fame for breaking the World Under-20 record for 800 meters with 1:44.3 in 1981, BYU was the first American college to offer a scholarship. Coach and athlete were a package, and they didn't stay long in Provo. 

The moved to Eugene, de Oliveira entered a graduate program, Cruz was admitted as a "walk on" to the track team, and a new era dawned on TrackTown USA. 

De Oliveria continued to coach Cruz as a Duck with head coach Bill Dellinger's blessing. (Cruz spoke very little English at the time). 

Other athletes joined de Oliveira's stable in the 1980s, including Mary Decker Slaney, Jose Luis Barbosa, Claudette Groenendaal among others. De Oliveira was also credited with developing the Oregon Circuit, a conditioning workout that he used on Amazon Trail (back then it was called the adidas Trail). 

Cruz and Barbosa, who represented Brazilian national teams in a combined four Olympic Games, organized fund-raising for de Oliveira's medical bills and and posted a statement after his death:

"Luiz de Oliveira's innovative training techniques have made an indelible mark on the sport of track and field. Luiz treated his athletes like family and helped us reached goals we never could have imagined would be possible. We both qualified for and represented Brazil in the 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games. We owe our athletic careers to Luiz de Oliveira."

De Oliveira moved his training group to San Diego where he remained through most of the 1990s, and then moved to Tucson, Arizona. He took a coaching opportunity to coach the middle distance athletes on the developing Qatar team in the 2000s and came home to Brazil to prepare the nation's distance athletes ahead of the 2016 Rio Games. 

Last November, de Oliveira underwent heart surgery and had a kidney removed. He was on haemodialysis, awaiting a possible kidney transplant when he died, according to Thompson.

Cruz is the senior coach of the U.S. Paralympics Team, which will begin competition Aug. 24 at the 2020 Summer Paralympics in Tokyo.