From zero to Olympic hero in 426 pages: Mulaudzi’s coach crafts a running text book

After Mbulaeni Mulaudzi finished last in the men’s 800m at the Zurich Weltklasse in early August 2004, he wanted to skip the Athens Olympics.

The 2002 Commonwealth Games champion believed he was out of form and destined to fail at the Games.

His coach believed otherwise. Ian Harries, by then already a veteran mentor who had been national coach of Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, arrived in the Greek capital with far more confidence than the athlete.

That was the first time I met Harries. Not accredited as part of the South African team for the Games, he was unable to stay at the athletes’ village with the bulk of the team. Instead he booked into the SA team hotel in downtown Athens.

We somehow kept bumping into each other at the rooftop bar in the evenings.

Each time I saw Harries he was more upbeat about Mulaudzi’s progress, explaining how he had been on point in his drills in the day.

In contrast disappointment was enveloping the South African athletics squad in Athens.

Jacques Freitag, the world high-jump champion, had been in a race against time to get over an injury.

But he crashed out in the qualifying round, failing to clear 2.25m. The 2.35m he had jumped to win the world title in Paris a year earlier would have won him Olympic silver.

South Africa’s mighty 400m hurdlers had gone to Athens with a full contingent of three men, including the bronze medallist from Sydney 2000, Llewellyn Herbert.

Herbert and Ockert Cilliers failed to advance past the semifinals, and Alwyn Myburgh finished seventh in a disappointing 49.07. The 48.21 season’s best he ran in the semifinals would have placed him third in the final.

Medal chances were falling by the wayside. 

But Harries never lost heart for Mulaudzi, who ran the 800m final on the last night of track and field.

Harries’ confidence only grew and his smile never faltered. Those evening beers must have tasted like nectar from Mount Olympus, though that came to a screeching halt when team management ruthlessly ordered the bar to close early each evening after a group of drunk SA swimmers celebrating the end of their competition overstayed their welcome. They apparently ran amok in the hotel, brandishing a fire extinguisher while being chased by an angry National Olympic Committee of SA (Nocsa) official in her nightie.

Mulaudzi went on to claim the silver medal, within an hour of high-jumper Hestrie Cloete finishing second in the women’s high jump.

Both lost out to competitors from Russia which, the world would discover later, was as serious about anti-doping as they are about peace these days.

But Mulaudzi’s performance three weeks after Switzerland was one of the great comeback stories of SA sport, and Harries was the architect.

Harries, now in his 57th year of coaching, has put all his expertise into his book, Running From The Heart: My personal coaching memoir, which is now available as hard copy having first come out as an e-book version on Amazon.

This is a must-have for any aspiring athlete or coach. It’s the closest — and at R350 the cheapest — way of gaining a lifetime of knowledge, which Harries attributes to a host of several great coaching minds, including Arthur Lydiard and Harry Wilson.

Harries’ methodology is eclectic, and he attributes different philosophies and techniques he’s applied to the many coaches he’s studied.

It covers pretty much every area, from the science of energy systems to identifying the right training methods for the right athletes.

Harries also caters for young athletes, pointing out that the focus should be on fun and variation, rather than specialisation and heavy training.

“Severity of competition and the rigidity of training programmes have little place in the life of the younger athlete,” Harries writes.

Programmes should be adapted after puberty,

His training programmes include on-track and off-track sessions, from 800m through to steeplechase, cross-country and up.

The book, of course, includes a chapter on Mulaudzi, who died in a car accident in 2014. The two parted ways in 2005, but Harries always believed the runner had the ability to win Olympic gold and dip under 1 min 42.00 sec. 

The night Mulaudzi won silver in Athens remains etched in my memory. They kept the rooftop bar open late for Harries, who did a Zorba the Greek dance to celebrate the silver medal.

The book is self-published and people interested in ordering a copy can email Ian on enduramax@telkomsa.net.

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