Mihály Iglói (September 5, 1908 – January 4, 1998) was a Hungarian distance running coach. Iglói coached runners such as Sándor Iharos, István Rózsavölgyi, László Tábori,

Bob Schul Robert Keyser "Bob" Schul (born September 28, 1937) is a former American long-distance runner. , he is the only American to have won an Olympic gold medal in the 5000 m, at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Early career Schul, born and raised o ...

and

Jim Beatty James Tully Beatty (born October 28, 1934 in New York, New York) is a former American track and field athlete and North Carolina politician. He is best remembered as the first person to break the four-minute mile barrier on an indoor track, when ...

. Counting both outdoors and indoors, and distances no longer officially recognized, Iglói's students achieved 49 world records.

Iglói's athletic career and rise to fame as a coach

Iglói was a notable runner in the 1930s. A multiple-time Hungarian champion, Iglói participated in the

1500 metres The 1500 metres or 1,500-metre run (typically pronounced 'fifteen-hundred metres') is the foremost middle distance track event in athletics. The distance has been contested at the Summer Olympics since 1896 and the World Championships in Athle ...

at the 1936 Summer Olympics in

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, but was eliminated in the heats. Iglói became the coach of Honvéd Budapest, then the Hungarian army club, in 1950, and the results of his pupils steadily improved. The first

world record A world record is usually the best global and most important performance that is ever recorded and officially verified in a specific skill, sport, or other kind of activity. The book ''Guinness World Records'' and other world records organization ...

s for the Honvéd Budapest runners came as team efforts in the uncommon 4 × 1500 m relay in 1953 and 1954. Wholesale individual record breaking began on May 14, 1955, with Sándor Iharos beating Gaston Reiff's old 3000 metres record in Budapest with a time of 7:55.6. By the end of that year, Iharos held the world records over

, 3000 metres,

two miles The 2 mile (10,560 feet or 3,218.688 metres) is a historic running distance. Like the mile run, it is still contested at some invitational meets due its historical chronology in the United States and United Kingdom. It has been lar ...

and 5000 metres. István Rózsavölgyi had smashed the previous record over

2000 metres The 2000 metres or 2000-metre run is a track running event where five laps are completed around an outdoor 400 m track, or ten laps around a 200 m indoor track - the distance is 11.68 meters short of 1¼ miles. The global governing body World Ath ...

by almost five seconds with a time of 5:02.2; this was arguably the most impressive single mark by any of Iglói's Hungarian pupils, and lasted longer than any of Iharos' records. (It was eventually broken by Michel Jazy on June 14, 1962 with a time of 5:01.6.) László Tábori had tied Iharos' 1500m mark, and had become the third man in the world to run a

four-minute mile A four-minute mile is the completion of a mile run (1609 m) in four minutes or less. It was first achieved in 1954 by Roger Bannister, at age 25, in 3:59.4. As of April 2021, the "four-minute barrier" has been broken by 1,663 athletes, and is n ...

1956 Melbourne Olympics

As the form of Iglói's students continued in the Olympic year 1956, with both Rózsavölgyi and Iharos running further world records, team Hungary seemed poised to take the lion's share of medals in the long track events. However, that was not to be. The team's mentality and spirit was badly shaken as the

Hungarian Revolution of 1956 The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...

was bloodily crushed by the

Soviet military The Soviet Armed Forces, the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union and as the Red Army (, Вооружённые Силы Советского Союза), were the armed forces of the Russian SFSR (1917–1922), the Soviet Union (1922–1991), and th ...

just weeks before the

Melbourne Olympics The 1956 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, from 22 November to 8 December 1956, with the exception of the equestrian events, whi ...

. Iharos missed Melbourne entirely due to an ankle injury. Tábori and Rózsavölgyi underperformed and finished out of medals.

Career in the United States

Iglói (and Tábori) did not return to the communist Hungary after the Olympics. They moved to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

and eventually migrated to the west coast, with Iglói becoming the coach of the Los Angeles Track Club and later the

Santa Monica Track Club Santa Monica High School Girls Track team first coach is Dalal M. Ahmad, a USC graduate doing her second semester of student student teaching . She was placed in charge of the team in 1972 during her second semester of student teaching The Santa Mo ...

. Though Tábori stayed in good shape and continued to compete, his international career was effectively over, as he could no longer run for Hungary and was not yet a US citizen. Iglói, however, now had access to a talented generation of American runners, several of whom would eventually make an international impact. On February 10, 1962,

became the first man to run a four-minute mile indoors. Beatty also set world records over

both outdoors and indoors and American records over many other distances.

became a world-beater in 1964, running a new two mile world record (8:26.4) and winning the Olympic 5000 metres in

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that year with an impressive last lap sprint. However, injuries forced both Schul and Beatty to retire prematurely. Still continuing his coaching career, Iglói moved to

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in 1970, but did not meet with similar success there. After the fall of communism in Hungary he moved back to his native country, and died in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

in 1998.

Training methods

The key to Iglói's methods was

interval training Interval training is a type of training exercise that involves a series of high-intensity workouts interspersed with rest or relief periods. The high-intensity periods are typically at or close to anaerobic exercise, while the recovery periods inv ...

. Arduous training sessions twice a day sought to develop both speed and stamina. A typical Iglói session involved tens of repetitions of sprints of up to 400 metres with only short jog recoveries, distance run in the longest and hardest sessions totaling up to as much as 35 kilometers. Compared to other similar interval training systems, Iglói's had an emphasis on repetitions of such short sprints as 100 or 200 metres. His method was also inspired by the 'style' running of the 1930s in that he never used a stop watch but regarded his runners intensely and broke up the set of intervals when the described speed (e.g. 'good swing tempo') could no longer be run as relaxed as demanded Arnd Krüger, 'Mihaly Igloi. The man and the system', in Runners' World (ed.), Guide to distance running (Mountain View, CA, 1969), p. 168.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Igloi, Mihaly 1908 births 1998 deaths Hungarian male middle-distance runners Hungarian sports coaches Hungarian emigrants to the United States Olympic athletes of Hungary Hungarian athletics coaches Athletes (track and field) at the 1936 Summer Olympics Hungarian defectors Defectors to the United States 20th-century Hungarian people