Herbert ("Herb") James Elliott AC MBE (born 25 February 1938) is a former Australian athlete, one of the world's greatest middle distance runners. He never lost a race over 1500 metres or the mile, and during his career he broke the four-minute mile on 17 occasions.
At the 1960 Rome Olympic Games, Herb Elliott won the 1500 metres race by the largest margin that had been recorded in Olympic history.
Elliott credited his visionary and iconoclastic coach, Percy Cerutty, with inspiration to train harder and more naturally than anyone of his era. Cerutty was known to avoid the track, talk about role models outside athletics (like Da Vinci and Jesus!), and bring his athletes to the unspoiled seaside beauty of Portsea training camp south of Melbourne, where Elliott would sprint up sand dunes until he dropped. "Faster," said Cerutty, "it's only pain."
In 1938 Cerutty was 43, a Melbourne postal worker with a 60-a-day cigarette habit on the verge of a physical and mental breakdown. Bedridden after a collapse and given six months to live, Cerutty set out on what would become a quest for physical and mental perfection. He eschewed cooked food, and began reading philosophy and history. He exercised relentlessly, and by 1940 he was the Victorian marathon champion with a respectable personal best of two hours and 52 minutes.
