As a rugby player, he was accustomed to sprinting, and he had good raw speed. Lack of speed was not the cause of his humiliation. The problem was stamina. In fact, Lydiard decided, lack of stamina was also the reason he lost even shorter contests, including the half-mile and one-mile track races in which he routinely got thumped by local studs like Norm Cooper and Bill Savidan. Lydiard had more than enough horsepower to beat those guys. What he did not have was the capacity to sustain his speed.
