Percy Cerutty

Percy Wells Cerutty
Portrait of Percy Cerutty, aged 66, at his home in Portsea, 14 January 1961 by ©James Brian McArdle
Born	Percy Wells Cerutty (1895-01-10)10 January 1895 Prahran, Victoria
Died	14 August 1975(1975-08-14) (aged 80) Portsea, Victoria
Occupation	Track and Field coach
Spouse(s)	Dorothy Clara Barwell (m.7 November 1921)

Percy Wells Cerutty (10 January 1895 – 14 August 1975) was one of the world's leading athletics coaches in the 1950s and 1960s.

The eccentric Australian pioneered a home-spun system of "Stotan" training, embracing a holistic regime of natural diets, hard training in natural surroundings, and mental stimulation.

Cerutty coached Herb Elliott to a series of world record performances, culminating in an Olympic gold medal in the 1960 Rome Games.

Percy Cerutty was born in Prahran, a suburb of Melbourne, in 1895, the seventh child of Harry Richard Cerutty, accountant, and his wife Emily, née Neilson, both Victorian born. He was four years old when his mother left her alcoholic husband and struggled to raise her six surviving children.

In 1907, he left school to help support the family but was considered unfit to serve in World War I. He competed in athletics without distinction, suffering from illness after racing. Despite this fact, Cerutty was still determined to reach his highest potential.

In 1939, at the age of 43 Cerutty was faced with an formative challenge in his life; a nervous breakdown that necessitated taking leave from work at the P.M.G. and which prompted a reassessment of his life. After this, he began educating himself in healthy living. He focused on an extreme diet including mostly uncooked vegetables, weight lifting, and of course, running. His tactics evidently worked because his health radically improved, sustaining him into an energetic old age, and they informed his coaching and running philosophy.

After World War II, Cerutty began competing in distance running events. At the start of his career he failed to do much more than a jog. However, over the years he started making good strides towards being competitive in the running world. Right before he turned 51 he completed his first marathon in a time of 3 hours and 1 minute. Not long after that, he retired from running and began the coaching for which he is renowned.

Cerutty's unique "Stotan" philosophies were a blend of Stoic and Spartan principles, a combination that provided Cerutty a base for training his athletes.