Peter Snell era book has legs

David Ling is happy to see his publishing company’s recent release Peter Snell and the Kiwis Who Flew getting tweeted about by another famous runner. Dick Quax told his followers last week: “Began reading Vern Walker's Peter Snell and the Kiwis Who Flew. Great yarns about the fantastic NZ runners who inspired me. Well done Vern.”

“Despite its great popularity, athletics has been neglected recently as a sports topic,” David says. “We are getting a great response to the book by people who are enjoying reading this authoritative and incredibly interesting look back at the era of Snell, John Davies, Jeff Julian, Bill Baillie, Barry Magee and many other athletes of the time.

“Vern Walker’s firsthand experience as a nationally ranked runner of the sixties gives the story of his great contemporaries an immediacy that other sports books just don’t have. His accounts of the great medal-winning races are absolutely gripping.”

Peter Snell and the Kiwis Who Flew was one of just three sports books featured in the Paper Plus customer mail out for Father’s Day.

The pic of the 1961 10,000 metres shows Vern Walker leading  Barry Magee and Bill Baillie in a 10,000 metre event at Ellerslie Racecourse in 1961. However, Magee won, followed by Baillie and then the author. [from the book around page 250].