Legends of Athletics

Dubgal72

I'm a little obsessed with running biographies and autobiographies at the moment. Call it a 'crash course catch up' of 25 years if you will.

Netwerk Errer (his current incarnation?!) kindly dropped this into Krusty's log, an overview of the legendary Irish athlete, Jim Hogan:

http://www.letsrun.com/2002/hogan.html

Feel free to post your own links of interviews, overviews, etc in here.

Apologies if this has been done before, too lazy to search

Notwork Error

Dubgal72 wrote: »

I'm a little obsessed with running biographies and autobiographies at the moment. Call it a 'crash course catch up' of 25 years if you will.

Netwerk Errer (his current incarnation?!) kindly dropped this into Krusty's log, an overview of the legendary Irish athlete, Jim Hogan:

http://www.letsrun.com/2002/hogan.html

Feel free to post your own links of interviews, overviews, etc in here.

Apologies if this has been done before, too lazy to search

:rolleyes::D I'll have you know this is the longest I've ever had an account so hah:p

Great idea for a thread, I've loads of these kind of old articles read and would love to see more, it's kind of a minor obsession with stats and old stories of so I'll post up a few when I dig em up.

dna_leri

A good list here:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=67781057

Dubgal72

Bringing this over from an older thread, an interview with Gerry Curtis, King of the Roads back in the 80s and early 90s. He only started to run aged 24. I used to watch him bomb around our local park as a teenager.

https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/attachments/146464/134694.pdf

Dubgal72

dna_leri wrote: »

A good list here:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=67781057

Thanks DL, they don't seem to have external links or is that my device not performing? Had a quick search but no luck. Anyone else get anywhere?

Dubgal72

Tribute/overview of Donore Athlete Jim McNamara, "Gentleman Jim", a living breathing steam-training legend

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/the-paradox-of-a-running-legend-1.1401582

Will try dig up more on Jim. McNally mentions the "team ethic" in this piece, something that has been mentioned in the XC thread. Also mentions hard drinking...Jim was great at including me in rounds post-xc races back in the day when my dad was trying - rightly, probably - to shield his daughter from the 'excesses' of athletic drinking. I was always Team Jim

Dubgal72

And another: interview with Ronnie Delany (2014). Like Gerry Curtis and Bertie Messitt, Delany also had a spell in the army. His advice in this really struck a chord with me: 'learn how to race' and "race the man [woman], not the clock"...
Love too how he gives and gives back to the running community and other charities.

http://www.kencowley.com/ronnie-delaney-interview/

This is prompting me now to follow the Delany web: Billy Morton, Jumbo Elliot, Eamon Coughlan and Gerry Farnan, so if anyone has anything on these guys, jump in

TFBubendorfer

Dubgal72 wrote: »

This is prompting me now to follow the Delany web: Billy Morton, Jumbo Elliot, Eamon Coughlan and Gerry Farnan, so if anyone has anything on these guys, jump in

This article is not an interview with Jumbo Elliot but an article about him by one of his former runners:

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/05/sports/an-athlete-remembers-his-coach-jumbo-elliot.html

Dubgal72

^^^ Thanks TFB just the sort of article I was looking for. I stumbled across this site when reading about Delany's exploits in Santry, Delany had mentioned Albie Thomas so found this article:

http://www.racingpast.ca/john_contents.php?id=177

As well as a profile of athlete's triumphs and athletic CV, I'm interested in techniques and training approaches. Thomas was coached by Percy Cerutty, '50 years ahead of his time' and I found the following excerpt very interesting:

"Running form had been important to Thomas from his early days. “I practiced technique,” he explains. “I call it running tall and running light. Tall means you upper body is up off your hips. That means you are running light; you are running over the ground, not on it. It’s lifting your body up. If you sit on your hips you’re going to plod. If you lift yourself, the knee comes up and you have a longer stride.” And he absorbed Cerutty’s ideas on arm movement: “They come up to the center of your chest and then go back past your hip. It’s like the other two legs of the horse. Percy used to write to me a lot about horses.” But it’s running tall that he thinks is the key: “You’ve only got to look at the Africans, even up to the Marathon. They’re running so cool and light. I’ve taught all the kids I’ve coached to run tall.” His old rival Murray Halberg has cheekily paid tribute to Thomas’s running style, describing him as “Pacing along like a little cock sparrow in his usual crisp style.” (Halberg, Clean Pair of Heels, p. 71))

It looks like a great site, on the sidebar is a list of profile links to many of 'the greats' of middle and long distance running.

Oiriallach

Some info about Noel Carroll.

Dubgal72

Oiriallach wrote: »

Some info about Noel Carroll.

That's great thanks Oiriallach. Another army man and this joins up the army/Villanova/BHAA connections even more. Of course the running world is a small one I suppose

Sacksian

Two great audio interviews from Radio Kerry with Jerry Kiernan

http://www.terracetalk.com/interviews/76/Jerry-Kiernan-1
Detailed discussion of his entire career from 2008. 45 mins - cuts off at the end.

http://www.terracetalk.com/interviews/150/Jerry
Shorter interview from 2012.

A print interview in Marathon magazine with Jerry and his coach Brendan O'Shea after the 1984 marathon

http://clonliffeharriersac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Jerry-Kiernan-after-LA-84-Marathon-Magazine.pdf

Notwork Error

A nice article on Neil Cusack here from the examiner.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/other-sports/king-of-the-road-265924.html

CR 7

Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but I found it interesting and find myself going back and reading it every few weeks. Sonia's training diary for the month or so before winning the cross country(s) in 1998.