Encounter - What Happens When You've Run to the Top (Peter Snell & John Walker)

This March 1976 Encounter item catches up on athlete Peter Snell while studying human performance at University of California, Davis — 12 years after his double Olympic triumph in Tokyo. When world champion mile runner John Walker turns up, Snell takes him for a jog, and puts Walker through his paces in the Human Performance Laboratory. The pair muse over life, sport, success, choosing your future, and which of them is the best. The master counsels his heir on the upcoming Montreal Olympics, after Walker expresses fear at becoming the “biggest failure in history".

You’ve got to have a hero and I think everybody has a hero in their life, and mine was Peter Snell. And he still is really...

– John Walker, on Peter Snell

Key Cast & Crew

George Andrews

Producer