Australian athletics coach Clohessy dies

Australian distance coach Pat Clohessy

World Athletics is deeply saddened to hear that Pat Clohessy, the coach who guided Robert de Castella to the marathon title at the first World Championships in Helsinki in 1983, died in Brisbane on Monday (28 September). Clohessy, an early recruit to the professional staff at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, was 93.

Before he became an influential coach, Clohessy was a champion distance runner in his own right. He won consecutive NCAA three-mile titles for the University of Houston in 1961 and 1962, claimed the AAU three-mile title in 1963, and finished third at the World Games in Helsinki that same year.

He represented Australia over one mile and three miles at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, finishing seventh over the longer distance.

He retired as an athlete and became a teacher at Xavier College in Melbourne, where he was soon coaching the athletics team.

Some years later, a promising young runner named de Castella attended the school. “Deek” was 14 when he first began working with Clohessy and they went on to become one of the most famous athlete-coach partnerships in Australian athletics history. Their successes included the 1983 world marathon title, the 1982 and 1986 Commonwealth Games titles, a world marathon record of 2:08:18 at the 1981 Fukuoka Marathon, victory at the 1986 Boston Marathon, and wins at the Rotterdam Marathon in 1983 and 1991.

Reflecting on their remarkable relationship this week, de Castella said Clohessy was “like a second father” to him, writing on Instagram that he was “blessed to have had this great man mentor, guide and inspire me with his generosity, care, & wisdom”.

“To me, he exemplified what we want from all our coaches in all sports,” de Castella said. “He had a wealth of personal knowledge and wisdom from his own athletics background, and his caring nature, self-sacrifice and positivity uplifted everyone around him.

“The technical side was important, but it was the character and values and approach that made him stand out. He always said he preferred to coach someone with a little bit of talent and a lot of commitment, than someone with a lot of talent and a little commitment. As a coach, he was artistic and a craftsman. He could tell just from looking at someone how they were running.”

Clohessy was Australia’s distance running coach at the 1980 Moscow and 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games and was a national team coach at the 1983 and 1987 World Athletics Championships.

He worked as a national high-performance coach at the AIS from 1982 to 1994, where his coaching group included Simon Doyle, who was ranked world No.2 in the 1500m in 1990 and 1991, 1990 Commonwealth Games 5000m champion Andrew Lloyd, and Australian representatives Krishna Wood, Shaun Creighton, Susan Hobson and Pat Carroll.

During his five-decade coaching career, “Clo” became a cherished figure in Australian distance running, mentoring generations of athletes and coaches, including Dick Telford, coach of Australian middle-distance star Cameron Myers, who won this year’s Wanda Diamond League 1500m title.

As an AIS sports scientist in the 1980s, Telford came into Clohessy’s orbit when he began providing physiology support to the distance running group.

“Pat had a huge influence on me in his general approach to his athletes, which was ‘first do no harm’,” Telford recalls. “He had a very caring approach. It was how do we get the best out of an athlete with the least amount of risk and Pat epitomised the coaching art of how to do that.

“He was the only professional distance coach in the country at the time and he became the father figure of Australian distance running. He was a steadying influence and he had incredible success with a really simple plan.

“When I set a training programme now there are a few things that I include automatically that trace back to what Pat was doing. Franz Stampfl, Arthur Lydiard, Percy Cerutty and Pat Clohessy – they are the coaches who have influenced me.”

Clohessy’s sayings – “Clo-isms” – became legendary among the Australian distance running community. Anyone who asked about an athlete would invariably be told that they were “looking good” or “on the rise”.

He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1988 for his service to sport as a track and field coach, and was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1997.

In “retirement”, Clohessy returned to grassroots coaching in Brisbane, notably with the University of Queensland, continuing to pursue his passion for the sport until failing health intervened.

He is being remembered with admiration, affection and gratitude by the Australian athletics community this week, and his influence lives on.

Nicole Jeffery for World Athletics