The Owairaka Athletic Club is an amateur athletics sports club based at the Lovelock Track in the suburb of

Owairaka Owairaka is a suburb of New Zealand's largest city, Auckland. It is under the local governance of the Auckland Council. Owairaka is home to the Owairaka Athletic Club which is based at the Lovelock Track where five world records have been se ...

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

. The club was founded at Anderson Park, Mt Albert in 1943 and moved to its present site in the 1960s with the construction of the Lovelock Track which was opened on April 15, 1961. During the 1960s the club led the world in middle and long distance running under the guidance of the legendary coach

Arthur Lydiard Arthur Leslie Lydiard (6 July 1917 – 11 December 2004) was a New Zealand running, runner and athletics (sport), athletics coach. He has been lauded as one of the outstanding athletics coaches of all time and is credited with popularising the ...

(ONZ, OBE). The club has produced many international and national champions, most notably,

Murray Halberg Sir Murray Gordon Halberg (7 July 1933 – 30 November 2022) was a New Zealand middle-distance runner who won the gold medal in the 5000 metres event at the 1960 Olympics. He also won gold medals in the 3 miles events at the 1958 and 1962 Com ...

(ONZ, MBE) and the New Zealand Athlete of the Century,

Peter Snell Sir Peter George Snell (17 December 1938 – 12 December 2019) was a New Zealand middle-distance runner. He won three Olympic gold medals, and is the only man since 1920 to have won the 800 and 1500 metres at the same Olympics, in 1964. Snell ...

(KNZM, MBE). It is the training group of

Barry Magee Arthur Barry Magee (born 6 February 1934) is a retired New Zealand long-distance runner. He won a bronze medal in the marathon at the 1960 Olympics and in the 10,000 m event placed 26th at the 1960 and 23rd at the 1964 games.

Bill Baillie William David Baillie (28 May 1934 – 25 December 2018) was a New Zealand runner, who represented his country at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. There, he placed sixth in the 5000 m. He also competed at the 1954, 1958, 1962, and 1966 Briti ...

, Jeff Julian and

Ray Puckett Raymond Leslie Puckett (born 17 December 1935) is a former New Zealand distance runner, who represented his country at the Olympic Games in 1960 and 1964, and at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games. Coached by Arthur Lydiard, Puckett ...

known as Arthur's Boys which captures the history of this era. They all trained together and were made Olympians by the end of the 1960s training off the famed Waitarua run through the challenging backblocks of Auckland. With strong coaching a theme during the clubs lifetime, the club is associated with two great coaches, both inaugural inductees of the New Zealand Athletics Coach Hall of Fame:

(ONZ, OBE) and through Arch Jelley, OBE, (coach of 1976 Olympic 1500m gold medallist John Walker) the club continued its success producing Olympians, International and National champions through to the turn of the century. The late 1990s and into the 2000s saw the club's senior membership dwindle to social membership as organisational politics led to the senior membership amalgamating with College Rifles Harrier Club to form Auckland City Athletics Club with the goal of rivaling larger Auckland regional athletic clubs. Throughout the 2000s the junior membership of the club continued to be run by club stalwarts who persevered and preserved the club as a piece of international athletic history. Over the next ten years, the members entered non-competitive teams into relay events and maintained the children’s athletics programme. In 2009 the club worked with the Auckland City Council to build new facilities for the club and a new youth centre on the site of the old clubrooms at the Lovelock Track. During the 50th anniversary year of the 1961 Lovelock Track opening, Sir Murray Halberg opened the new clubrooms which coincided with the launch of a new five-year plan to rebuild the full membership of the club. Late in 2012 saw the closure of the existing Lovelock track and earthworks to begin on the resurfacing of old asphalt and black rubber surface to bring the track to competition standard once again. In September 2013, Owairaka celebrated its 70th Jubillee and will celebrate its 75th in 2018.

References

External links

Club website
{{Coord, -36.901493163, 174.731788869, region:NZ, display=title Sport in Auckland Athletics in New Zealand