Mihály Iglói (September 5, 1908 – January 4, 1998) was a Hungarian distance running coach. Iglói coached runners such as

Sándor Iharos Sándor Iharos (10 March 1930 – 24 January 1996) was a Hungary, Hungarian long-distance runner. Though unsuccessful in major competitions, Iharos ran List of world records in athletics, world records over multiple distances and is one of only t ...

István Rózsavölgyi István Rózsavölgyi (30 March 1929 – 27 January 2012) was a Hungary, Hungarian athlete who competed mainly in the 1500 metres. Career Rózsavölgyi was born in Budapest. One of the star pupils of Mihály Iglói, he entered the 1956 S ...

László Tábori László Tábori (July 6, 1931 – May 23, 2018) was a Hungarian middle- and long-distance runner, best known for equalling the 1500 metres world record and placing 4th in that event at the 1956 Summer Olympics. Biography Early career and ...

Bob Schul Robert Keyser Schul (September 28, 1937 – June 16, 2024) was an 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 rais ...

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, w ...

. Counting both outdoors and indoors, and distances no longer

officially An official is someone who holds an office (function or Mandate (politics), mandate, regardless of whether it carries an actual Office, working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority (eithe ...

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 1500-metre run 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 Athletics since 1983. It is equivalent to 1.5 kilomet ...

at the

1936 Summer Olympics The 1936 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XI Olympiad () and officially branded as Berlin 1936, were an international multi-sport event held from 1 to 16 August 1936 in Berlin, then capital of Nazi Germany. Berlin won the bid to ...

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

, 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 organizatio ...

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

beating

Gaston Reiff Gaston Étienne Ghislaine Reiff (24 February 1921 – 6 May 1992) was a Belgian runner. He competed at the 1948 and 1952 Olympics in the 5000 m event and won it in 1948, defeating Emil Zátopek in the final and becoming the first Belgian track a ...

's old

3000 metres The 3000 metres or 3000-metre run is a track running event, also commonly known as the "3K" or "3K run", where 7.5 laps are run around an outdoor 400 m track, or 15 laps around a 200 m indoor track. It is debated whether the 3000 m sho ...

record in Budapest with a time of 7:55.6. By the end of that year, Iharos held the world records over 1500 metres, 3000 metres,

two miles The 2 mile (3,520 yards, 10,560 feet, or exactly 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 Ki ...

and

5000 metres The 5000 metres or 5000-metre run is a common long-distance running event in track and field, approximately equivalent to or . It is one of the track events in the Olympic Games and the World Championships in Athletics, run over laps of a sta ...

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 At ...

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 Michel Jazy (13 June 1936 – 1 February 2024) was a French middle-distance runner and long-distance runner. He won the 1500 metres silver medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics, as well as two golds (in 1962 and 1966) and one silver (in 1966) at t ...

on June 14, 1962 with a time of 5:01.6.)

had tied Iharos' 1500m mark, and had become the third man in the world to run a four-minute mile.

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 – 4 November 1956; ), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was an attempted countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the policies caused by ...

was bloodily crushed by the

Soviet military The Armed Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, also known as the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union, the Red Army (1918–1946) and the Soviet Army (1946–1991), were the armed forces of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republi ...

just weeks before the

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

. 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 Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

Hungary after the Olympics. They moved to the United States 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 The Santa Monica Track Club (also known as SMTC) was formed by Joe Douglas as a post-collegiate track club. By the 1980s, the team came to be a major player in worldwide Track and Field competition, with team members setting numerous World and Nat ...

. 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

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

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 Greece 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 city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

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 break periods. The high-intensity periods are typically at or close to anaerobic exercise, while the recovery periods invol ...

. Arduous training sessions twice a day sought to develop both speed and stamina. A typical Iglói session involved tens of repetitions of short intervals 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 Arnd Krüger (born July 1, 1944) is a German professor of sport studies. Krüger earned his BA (English major) from UCLA in 1967 and his PhD from the University of Cologne (Modern and Medieval History) in Germany in 1971. He attended UCLA on a ...

, '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 for Hungary Hungarian athletics coaches Athletes (track and field) at the 1936 Summer Olympics Hungarian defectors Defectors to the United States 20th-century Hungarian sportsmen