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LEGENDS OF ATHLETICS - Ronnie Delany
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Thanks to Firedance for her help transcribing this section. More to come, another 35 minutes or so, will have it up over the weekend.
RDLet me revert for a few moments to the actual race [Olympic 1500m final]. I think I talked earlier about the Jack Sweeney theory of making the one decisive move. I saw a picture yesterday that I couldn't believe, it was in the official report of the Melbourne Olympic Games, and it was given to me by a lifelong friend Hussein, his mother got it for him forty years ago. So in this, page 295, there's a picture of [us] coming to the bell, we were bunched within six yards - and this picture covers that. I thought it was rather an unkind picture, I thought they should have put one of me winning the race and bursting through the tape!
[1956 Official Report here ]
[great pics here http://villanovarunning.blogspot.ie/2010/11/this-day-in-villanova-t-history.html ]But they chose this picture, significantly because Lincoln of Australia was leading, Landy was coming up on the outside. I'm in the background running in about 10th position, it doesn't matter, we're all about within six yards...And this emphasised to me a couple of points I was making earlier about the race; the race beginning at the bell and then it evolving – I explained 'the evolving' of the race earlier, I think, where you take this decisive move, you get into the lead and no-one's going to pass you.
I love seeing this picture and I'm going to treasure it - I took a photocopy of it - because it emphasises exactly what the race is about. Incidentally, a point with a little humour, the bell ringer was so excited at the field being so bunched, he forgot to ring the bell! So there you go!
Anybody any good with touching up pics, we could do a montage and frame them for Ronnie?
DG
It was a very tight last lap wasn't it!
RDAs well as the bell ringer, I also remember the starter was “Judy” Patching [Julius “Judy” Patching] and I think I spoke of him earlier. Judy was there fifty years later at the fiftieth anniversary where I was the keynote speaker. And the other person who was a keynote speaker was Al Orter, the incredible four time Olympic champion. He was a professional speaker in the sense that he was on some sort of a [speaking] circuit in America so he gave a very orthodox speech where I did a conversational presentation because I knew the audience, I knew the Olympic games, I knew the personalities. My remarks went very well, to the extent that László Tábori, from Hungary, who finished fifth in the race, comes up to me afterwards and says – not meaning to be offensive – 'God' he says, 'Delany, I never knew you could talk!'. So they're the times, they are the beautiful times.
DG
They really are...and tell me about pain in that last lap?
RD
[*Landy's existing record was 3:58Pain? No sense of pain. Pain is – you know it yourself, as a runner, all your runners know it – it's not [a] specific ache, it's just a sense that you have spent most of what's in you. Now, when you're winning a race, you've nil pain, because you're 'the alpha male', you're dominating. You take the lead and you're running away and it's almost an animalistic thing to it: that you are exploding to the front, no one is catching you...except one time I felt what one might describe as pain, it was actually a depletion of energy, that was in the race in Santry, August 1958, where four of us broke the world record and five ran under the four minute mile*. And wonderful people I care about; Merv Lincoln, myself, Murray Halberg, Olympic champion, Albie Thomas...that race – they ran me very hard – I think the first half was 1:57, I was used to going through in two minutes. The three quarters was under three...I'd like it to be about 3:03 then the last 56 seconds and 54 seconds. And they had a good race – a fast race. They stretched me – a team, the Antipodes taking on a single Irishman, they came with that intent, they ran the energy out of me! So the third lap, I was hanging in there. But I did hang in and there's an interesting point about that, that when your energy is more or less expended, there's still the capacity to finish: you don't suddenly collapse off the track or something. You guts it out, you brave it out, and you try and finish as well as you can.
Now Elliott was gone, he was gone twenty five yards ahead of me, but I still had a race. Lincoln, I wasn't going to get near either but wasn't Murray Halberg – who was to be the Olympic 5000m champion in 1960, wasn't he in front of me so I had to pass him. There wasn't the psychology of the home crowd or anything like that, it was just the instinct, I wanted to run on. That was the only time I really felt aches and pain in a race. I took pain – or whatever pain is – as part and parcel.
So for example, the intensity of your mind set during a race, you don't go through a process of 'I'm feeling pain' or 'I'm hurting now'. I don't, I didn't and maybe contemporary athletes would be the same...
1st Herb Elliott smashed it: 3:54.5
2nd Merv Lincoln 3:55.9
3rd Ron Delany 3:57.5
4th Murray Halberg 3:57.5 (all four under Landy's record and
5th Albie Thomas, the fifth man to run under four minutes in 3:58.6]So when I was doing some of my doubles – and this is an aspect we might cover a little more later -
I used to do these incredible doubles, in fact I held the world record for a mile/half mile double. I'd win the mile in 4:03, 4:04 and twenty minutes, forty minutes later, I'd run the half mile and I'd win the half mile in 1:48 and 1:47 and no sense of fatigue. In other words, the 4:06 or 4:04 or 4:03 was just striding....no great expenditure of energy.
And then the 800m, totally different, that was a race. It was much more dynamic in that you had to be very clever again in the first lap. You had to get in contact. And then the final lap, you were sprinting. You knew you were really running hard the whole way. Now, I won most of those doubles, except when I came across a great athlete. So the great athletes that I couldn't beat in a double were Arnie Sowell; very early in my career I won the mile at the Inter-Collegiates, he was a class 800m runner, he ends up third or fourth [fourth 800m Melbourne 1956] in the Olympics.
And the other one was where I met Don Bowden. He was the first American four minute miler. I raced him in Austin, Texas in the NCAAs, national collegiate athletics, I'd won the mile again – five points to my team – and I'd taken him on in the half. He ran 1:47.2, I ran 1:47.8. I think I was hurting a bit that day! Certainly because he was beating me!
DG
[We're] just glad to know you're a little bit human!
Just to go back. One of the members had asked a question about 'the five men under four minutes' so it's great that we answered that there. I want to go back to the more general stuff. You mentioned in your autobiography that Jake Nevin gave you 'rub downs'. Tell us about supplementary stuff. Massages, stretching...
RDVery little. In fact...I don't take pride in it but I could barely touch my toes and the fact that I could touch my toes, I was sort of a show off! You know, you did a few stupid looking [pre race]...It's a bit like a McGregor fight now, or the first few minutes when the bull fight is announced, they're running across the ring, they're doing stretches, they're doing flips...my 'show off thing' was I could touch my toes. [laughs] Prior to the race I'd touch my toes! I'd do some swings, you know arm swings, lateral swings so that I'd be turning my torso. I did no stretching, stretching wasn't 'in vogue'. Funny, stretching would have been very interesting because I think it does contribute to your ultimate speed but we did no stretching, we did minimal 'PT'.
DG
Circuit training or any of that?
RDNo, none of that. The latter part of my career, the only thing I used to do; I used to do an immense amount of upper body work and this may be of interest to your readers. I took a sort of a [drawls] 'masculine pride' in this, you know; your pectorals, your laterals, your biceps, your triceps...you're human! I'm giving you a lot of personal things here!
So when I was fifteen years of age, I used to do a lot of upper body work and then when I began running, I used to do endless press-ups, endless tree lifts...I'd find a branch of a tree... In Villanova, press-ups were easy. When I'd see a bar, I'd instantly do ten lifts. I did an immense amount of this to the point where today – again to put a bit of humour into it – Trinity College (I'm a member of the Knights of the Campanile, which is an honorary society), when I was being inducted, I told them about the history – the 'legend of Ronnie Delany' - squinting eyes in the valley used to see me doing the tree lifts and the press-ups and of course the legend grew that I was doing hundreds of press-ups and I was doing fifty lifts. The reality is, I probably did a series of fifty press-ups. I didn't want any strains... then I'd do another fifty then another fifty, but the legend says was I was doing a couple of hundred. So that's my fame.
But to develop the point – a key point – later when I was injured, something coming into vogue was weight lifting. So this I loved. Again, because I loved doing upper body work so I would lift 150 pounds, easily to my own body weight. I'd only lift a weight I could press about five times. On the bench I could do about 240 pounds. Now I was 146 pounds and I was bench pressing 220-240 pounds and again, there's a humourous story there. A cousin of mine, who was a famous international rugby player, I was lifting these heavy weights in Trinity and I don't have a frame – you should be in a frame when you're pressing – I'm about to press 200 pounds 'only' and your man looks down 'Ronnie, you'll kill yourself', I look towards him and think 'you what...' and with that, I press the 200 pounds three times.
DG[ laughs] 'that'll show you'
RD
[smiles]'Yeah, that'll show you'
DG
Yeah, the 'experts' change their opinion on dynamic stretching and static stretching etc, different things are 'in vogue' at different times....
RDI wouldn't have kept myself apace of these things....some things logically seem wrong to me. I'd go to my club and I'd be going to swim. I'd see guys doing stretching, they'd be almost getting into their gear and they'd be stretching and I'd just say [to myself] 'their body's not warm'....So thank you for mentioning that to me because I wouldn't be up to scratch on that. There is an immense amount of stretches, when you see – in particular – eventers, like hurdlers the sort of things they do, they're more frightening! So, middle distance runners, you'd wonder what good it is doing these contortions!
DG
I think you have to be in tune with your own body and know what your body needs
RD
DGYes, yes, my body needed slow warm up. So what I would do, I'd jog pathetically slow for maybe 10, 12 minutes and subliminally I was thinking 'don't use energy'. Then I'd do strides - and strides when you've natural speed take nothing out of you so I'd do the equivalent of 120yd strides. I wouldn't do 220's because that might begin to impinge on your level of energy, what you're going to need in a race. That would be my 'process' and then I'd do a little more jogging, slowing down, specifically to warm down. Because most places I was running, it was very warm anyway, you get your body warm very quickly.
But after them, it was focussing, it was mental focus: concentration on the race and a settling of your nerves. Because your nerves are such that on the day of the race, you went through these various periods where your tummy would be agitated, very busy in itself and it would be turning it on and turning it off. So if I was running at 10 o'clock at night, for example in Madison Square Gardens, I didn't need this energy building up in me from 10 in the morning. So I'd have to control that and then when it came to six o'clock in the evening, I wanted to 'turn on' this nervousness, this build up...I would allow it to take over and then you had to calm that before the race so that half-hour before the race, I went into this mental frame where [I'd be] totally concentrated to the point that I wouldn't recognise people, I'd walk by my brother. I'd be focused, I wouldn't be communicating with anyone. My mind would be so concentrated, I wouldn't be hearing things. I never heard the roar of the crowd. I walked into a stadium, what struck me when I went into the stadium mostly, was light. In the Olymic stadium, you were in an assembly room and then you go out suddenly into the blaze of light so it wasn't that I was absorbing the atmosphere. And I often relate this to when I go to Croke Park when I watch the competing teams coming out. Now the experienced Kerry or Dubs, they will be focussed, their eyes would be on the back of the fella in front of them and they will not look into the crowd. And then you see, the people that haven't been there before, what are they doing? Their heads are left-right, enjoying the crowd and I see this and as the elite athlete I am, and was, I just think 'that focus is wrong', and no-one has dealt with that. So GAA managers, coaches; please note.
That is great that we digressed into that because we talk a lot about nerves on boards; how to channel them, how to control them.
RDYes, adrenaline, you literally have to manage that to the point where, when you get on the starting line, you can. Because you're so focussed, there's almost a bit of 'oh my god, I have to do this again, I have to race again...oh my god....I have to put myself through this “agony”...'. It's not really agony, because that's what you love to do, you love to run. But there is this subliminal thought that 'here I am, going to put myself through this again'.
DGI think I told you a little anecdote about indoors in America during my unbeaten streak of 40 races, psychologically, sometimes in a race, my mind would wander – contradicting what I was saying earlier – but I was so supreme indoors that I didn't have to worry and my mindset would begin to wonder 'will I develop a cramp, will I do this, will I do that or will I drop in the side' and I think I said 'no' and the thought would occur to me, 'oh my god, they'd have to take me to hospital' and no, no way, I didn't want to be in hospital, anywhere near doctors or nurses. (both laugh)
Mere mortal do that EVERY race, (RD laughs) not just the odd one like you. That leads nicely to Firedance's [it's ok, I didn't call you that FD
] question, 'what were the highs and lows of training and competing week after week in your unbroken streak in America
RDThe training was no issue. The training was a pleasure. I didn't have lows because I was winning all the time. Therefore I had no 'low' going in...I think the pressure more was 'how good is the guy I'm racing?'
Maybe Tom Murphy, a very good half miler in New York, Manhattan - an Olympian for America – I'd be cajoled into racing him in Madison Square Garden. That would be difficult in the sense of 'how good is he, can I beat him?' Of course I wouldn't tell you these stories if I didn't beat him....
There was also 'the [pressure of] doubles'. There was great team spirit in Villanova, we won all the championships, we were called the greatest little track team in the world. We won the National Collegiates, we won the Inter-Collegiates. Coach Elliott would ask me to run a 1000 yds and the 2 mile. The problem about the 1000yds was that I had to run a heat and a final. I used to run it in about 2:12 – the heat, about 2:13, the final 2:12. A winning race, a classic race, I'd get away with, I'd have to run 2:10. So I wasn't far off, I was two seconds off what I'd normally be running but I was running two of them. Then 40 minutes later, I'd run the two mile. Now I'd never [visited?] the two mile before, I'd be in the race and my job was to score points for Villanova so we'd win the inter-collegiate championships. I'd have a colleague on the team with me, Alex Breckenridge, who was supposed to be 'in the points' so the plan would be to stay with Breckenridge [but] Breckenridge wouldn't be able to win the race. So I'd be with him and I'd be 30 yards off the pace and I'd almost have to say to myself 'jeez, you'd better go Ron' and I'd win the 2 mile as well...again, I never tell you these stories unless I won...so I did that twice in succession.
This really, was phenomenal at the time, it was the psychology, the energy, the stamina that was required to win an inter-collegiate championship two years on the trot. Now the first year I had to run very hard, I think I ran a 9:06 indoors [9:06.6 actually. This man's memory is something else!]; like breaking 9 mins indoors was probably brilliant. The next year I had the slower race [9:17.6] but it was equally hard, in fact the second year was harder because the pace was slower. When I was running two miles because of my style and my staccato-type lift in my legs and the particular style I had, the tempo didn’t suit me because it was too slow. I'd be running say 66s laps when I was used to running 60 second laps and I'd nearly be tripping over myself. Then when the race began [at], I'd say, a quarter of a mile to go and you really had to put it out – then you went into your running form, your posture, your drive etc.
DG
It's hard to run slow isn't it..
RD
DGI found it hard to run slow (laughs) and the other thing I didn’t like about running slowly, you'd to run so fast at the end! I remember one race I ran, somewhere in Northern Ireland, Maeve Kyle my lovely friend would tell me where it was...It might have been Ballymena, and it was gale force 100 miles an hour blowing and going down the back stretch the wind took you, and you were running it about 1:30 half mile pace and the other way you were running at about three minutes pace! I was afraid I'd fall I mean it also negated what you had; your stamina negated, your speed to a degree, maybe a guy with more body mass with the wind behind him, a big fat guy!
There [above] are some of the anecdotal things I remember.
And so you were racing very hard at this stage every week - what would your mid week trainig have been like? Would you even bother tapering for a weekend race?
RDOh very balanced - Oh yes I would, you did the work out of season and the race kept you fit. I think that's where our contemporary athletes - I hope none of these comments are picked up negatively - our contemporary athletes do an immense amount of training during the season, they are expending energy in heavy training sessions. My training sessions were my races. There, I had to run harder so my training pattern for a week would be –I always let myself break down on the night of the race, mostly Saturday nights in Chicago, you can visualize, Chicago one week, Milwaukee the next, Boston the next New York the next, Philadelphia the next. I was all over the United States. When I raced I didn’t know anyone at these cities but I always partied a bit afterwards, particularly in New York because you weren't going to sleep that night. So I would go out - I wasn't a beer drinker, I drank an occasional beer - I liked company so I liked non-athletic company. Maybe a girlfriend would come up to New York to see me run, I'd contact her later and of course we'd go out until maybe till 2,3 in the morning just having fun, and that was a sort of antidote to the race. Your legs would be tingling from the energy, your body was not going to sleep and yet you weren't going to abuse it or drink or anything like that but you were going to go out and have social company so I rather enjoyed that aspect of the Saturday night.
The Sunday I went home and went to bed. I went home, when I say I went home I travelled from wherever it was, got home to Villanova, went in the sack, went to sleep because I had done the race and I'd done the socializing so I was tired. No point in doing anything on Sunday – no slow run or anything like that because every [other] athlete, I'd say, would run home after the race, would be running the next day. I didn't, I rested my body.
Then Monday I was fit to train. We did a short analysis of the race or how I'd performed with Elliot, and then the next day, that Monday I did very little training, I might do 5/6 mile easy run with my colleagues; fun, talking, laughing. Then the next day we'd do a workout – Tuesday; we'd do a very moderate workout Wednesday and we would do a light workout Thursday, rest Friday. So I was just keeping a fluidity going, I wasn't putting any strain on my body i.e., I wasn't risking any calf or any hamstring or anything else. Then you did the race and the race was where you put it out. Many times you didn't have to put it out, if I was running 4:10 or something, that was like a light workout. When you had to run hard you knew you'd had a workout. Mostly, a lot of the races I won then I never ran to beat the clock, I only ran to win, so if I could win in 4:08 I'd win in 4:08 indoors; if I could win in 4:06, I'd win in 4:06 or if I could get away with running 4:12 I'd do that. (laughs)
DG
Well that's what struck me, one of the main things that helped you win that Olympic gold medal was that you practiced tactics, tactics, tactics up until then and so when I was watching your final I thought 'how is he hanging back there, how does he have the discipline to hang back there but you knew that you could because you practiced and practiced.
RDAlso, closeness was the important thing – where we started this talk today, in fact it was only 10 yards or less between us – only 6 yards to the bell - there was no ungentlemanly stuff, no pushing and shoving or blocking or anything like that. We were racing, we were all concentrating on the same objective, the race was beginning. Hewson heads for the front, Landy is out right beginning to move into position. I'm there stuck at the back but I know the field is going to break up so that's the mindset at that stage.
But the practicing is interesting in the sense it was really using your strength – my strength was my explosiveness, I could explode away and going back to credit Jack Sweeney again, the single move, I always had that discipline. It was difficult, you're quite right, but see I was comfortable. The first few laps, all I was thinking about was don’t expend energy – float, float like a bee – Muhammad Ali – just don't use energy.Now the only place I ran badly: I ran very badly in the European Championships in 1958, I think I might have told an anecdote of Brian Hewson – that race I was too far off the pace at the bell, I think. I'd love to see it again, I've never seen it in my life, but I must have been 20/25 yards down at the bell – that was a stupid race. The reason it was stupid was because I was mentally tired. I'd been racing all year, I'd been in the famous 4 minute mile in Dublin, I'd been pushed to race all these quality athletes. I probably set a world record indoors and it's now August and I'm mentally banjaxed and it was a bad day, lashing rain and probably my concentration wasn’t solely on winning, my concentration was 'my god, this ordeal, here I am racing again'. It's eight months since I started racing like this, I'd run my first race in January and now here I am in August and I'm still racing. So that pressure, no one would ever understand, that pressure no sports writer could ever analyse because the thinking wasn’t there to realise psychologically what I was going through. That was a huge psychological problem, the amount of racing I did back home here in Ireland. There, I had the added pressure of wanting to please my audience, wanting to please - deliver the expectations.
It was no problem if Billy Morton brought over some journeyman runner: I don't want to insult anyone by calling them that but there were guys coming in to race...they weren't going to beat me, I know that. Then Morton would bring in [Herb] Elliot and I knew I was up against it, 'how can I beat him?' but I'd focus on that – that would become sort of an Olympic thing, I would really work hard for that, I'd be most disciplined about my social life and I'd figure what I had to run to beat him – then he'd do something different and whap me, whap me... as Ali would say!0 -
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DG
A little bit more about training: you took the 'hard days hard' and the 'easy days easy'...
RDYeah, and the important point really, is I only did qualitative training. I never did quantitative training. So I never did 20 quarter miles at 66 seconds. I was doing quality work outs all the time. So therefore, my mileage was quite low. If I did 50, 60 miles a week, that's all I would do where the guys who became champions after me were doing 100 miles a week. The 'Snells' were doing a hundred and twenty. Here, I was the 'pace', staccato type runner playing off my speed which was my strength and I wasn't really working on the stamina to any great [extent] other than the interval training method was building my stamina. But the gap was, I wasn't doing 100 miles a week. And it probably wouldn't have helped me if I'd done 100 miles a week, it would have taken something away, it would have taken an edge off the finish maybe. I probably would have been more prone to injury. The only injury I ever had was the Achilles tendon, it's a dreadful injury, I hope none of your listeners have it.
DG
You found what worked for you and it worked very well because you are referred to as 'one of the great legends of the time' in Pat Butcher's book The Perfect Distance ...by Sebastian Coe, no less.
RDThat's sweet to hear that, I didn't know that. That's lovely because Coe said that to my children, he said I was an enormous [influence]. Maybe I [really] was somebody he looked up to.
Bannister wrote to me one time, he was praising my tactics. I think he described it as – I have the letter – one of the greatest 1500 metres of all time. It was lovely to hear from him. He wasn't a great tactical runner himself.
We both chatted for a minute about Butcher's book and Ron reminded me to remind ye about this“I'll mention that again, because that's worth getting”
RDThe Kiwis Who Flew is a beautiful book because it deals with my era and it deals with post-era which is Peter Snell, it brings you nearly to the '70s. It's not quite contemporary but it's a lot more contemporary than the '50s!
DG
Can you tell us about the 1960 Olympics [Chivito] and the story behind why you didn't defend your 1500m title?
RDReally, the significant point is that I hadn't raced since I set the world record in March, 1959.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SycZhP5wLkIHere it is, August 1960 so [because of] the Achilles tendon, I had to stop training, there was no medication then, you couldn't take cortisone – well I wasn't prepared to do it, you had to get an injection. So I rested. Then my problem was, when I was starting to train in spring, was to get myself progressively fit and not to put any strain on the tendon. So I got myself to the point where I ran a quarter mile demo in Drogheda to see if everything was working. When I ran up there, I ran 49 or something like that, so everything was all right...but I went to the Olympics without a preliminary race. Now you can imagine, racing not having raced. So where I was screwed in Rome, it was the administration, not anyone else. [Because there was an unexpectedly large amount entered, they decided to run the second round on the same day as the first round.]
I was supposed to run the 1500 and 800. The 800 was in there as a sort of a preliminary thing, 'see how well you go in the 800'. So the first race was no problem. The second race was a problem. Why? Because the first race was at nine o'clock in the morning: I qualify, no problem. I qualified against really, really quality runners, worth looking up who they were.Quality running. Six o'clock in the afternoon, I have to go back and race again. So my body was tingling after the first race, in or around 1:51 [1:51.19] which was a bit of a stride, but I had to run hard to qualify, to beat the other guys and take my position in the next round. That day I lay in bed, my legs were tingling, that really finished me. I ran 1:51 again in the second round but it wasn't fast enough to qualify. Again, you have to picture this, I had no manager. There was theoretically a team manager, a lovely man, Louis Vandendries, who I talked about earlier. So I go to Louis, I say 'look, Louis, pull me out of the 1500, I'm not fit enough' and without arguing with me [did so]. What I needed was someone to say to me 'hey Ron, you've had two hard races in the same day, you have a high level of fitness, you don't have to run the 1500 for five or six days, we'll do some soft work between now and then, the heat will bring you through another phase of fitness and you'll be reasonably fit for the final, you might even be competitive for the final'. I'd no-one to advise me about that so John Lawlor [fourth in the hammer] and I went out and had a few beers that night in Rome. That was the end of my Rome Olympics.I've no regrets on...the only regret I would have is that I didn't have the time to get to the level of fitness I wanted. One of the things I have [in compensation], shortly after, I ran in Santry stadium say two weeks later [22 September, Invitational meet]; two weeks later, I was flying. There's a picture at home - and I don't have pictures so much of me winning, I have pictures of me losing – a half mile in Santry. Who am I racing down to the line? The winner of the 800m [Olympics], Peter Snell. Who is behind me? Herb Elliott [he won the 1500m in Rome in 3:35.6 WR and OR]. Who was also behind me? Another [semi-]finalist from the Rome Olympics, a guy called Tony Blue of Australia [semi finalist again in Tokyo 1964]. Now that picture to me says 'you were still enormously competitive' and I really treasure that picture. I also have a picture of Elliott beating me because that signalled that a new generation was taking over. One from 1960, the other from 1958, they're the pictures I have, reminders – in a nice sort of way – that allows me to bring us up to when I retire.
I can't find the losing picture online. Here's a winning image, just for the record
http://www.athleticsireland.ie/downloads/events/ronniedelaney.jpgAgain, I retired because of the Achilles, a re-occurrence after I'd run a couple of indoor races in America on an Irish relay team.Before [I retired], in September or August 1961, I raced Snell again and I raced George Kerr and I think I set a national record [800m 1:47.1 Santry Invitational meet, 17 July]. What I loved about that, I'm 26, I've had all these injuries for two years and now I'm retiring and what I didn't realise until I read Peter Snell's book was that I was ranked fourth in the world at 800 metres, the year I retired. I held the world record for the indoor mile and I held the world mile/half mile double record within the same sport and I didn't realise this until I read [his book] – this might be a measure of my modesty (laughs)...or a lack of my curiosity.I love that race too. I didn't realise that Kerr had beaten me but he was number 2 in the world, probably to Snell at the time. So it wasn't exactly a bad defeat, I was very competitive. The picture of that is the three of us almost in a line, so I love that race too.
[Should add European record to this exit list too: 7m 21.8 secs in the 4x880yds in Santry on 9 August with Noel Carroll, Basil Clifford and Derek McCleane]
DG
You certainly went out on a high note. Your last solo race, before the relay series, was the Universiade in Sofia, the World Student Games and you won.
RDYeah, the Universiade was like the European championships but only those who went to college could compete in it. An awful lot of athletes then were college graduates. You got scholarships to college, you [athletes] were slightly more privileged, it wasn't the same sport as say boxing. Under-privileged people saw boxing as a route to success. Running was slightly different, the elegant runners from Oxford University; the Bannisters, the Chataways, the Boyds...the Ron Delanys of Villanova University (twinkles)...we were educated but university graduates [so went to] the Universiade. So I ran the 800m which I won, I won easily but again, different times. I was also down to run the 1500m but that night I went to a party and I met this lovely person from Scotland and I'm there partying, and I have to run a heat of the 1500 at nine o'clock the next morning. I've just won the world title and I decide 'I'm staying at the party'. There, the difference in time! Isn't it quite incredible. You see, this is what no-one today could realise; but there was no money, there was no incentive, no materialism...and you'd no manager, again I had no manager. If I'd had Jumbo there, he would have said with his slight stutter 'get your ass to bed Delany! You're running in the morning'. He always told me 'he did the planning, the race organisation, I did the running'. Again, I've no regrets.
Thank you for mentioning that, that's lovely because I felt 'yeah, I am still world champion'.
DG
And then after your last solo race...
RDI then ran the relays in New York. The relay team of Basil Clifford, Donore Harriers, four minute miler; Noel Carroll, Civil Service, great great 800m runner; Derek McCleane, Olympian 1964. we were a superb team. I got the re-occurrence of the Achilles tendon only now I wasn't prepared to endanger it any more and I just said 'I'll retire' and go. I retire – my beautiful wife, Joan – I decided I was going on to my next challenge, my marriage.
LIFE AFTER RUNNING UP NEXT0 -
Still more to come after this
DG
Did you do any running or jogging to keep fit after [retiring]? (annapr)
RDNo, first of all because I couldn't run because of the Achilles tendon. What I started doing when I got the leg right was playing rugby. The autumn of '62, I played rugby for Palmerston, De La Salle, I had a brilliant career on the third A's, a lovely fellowship playing rugby. I was a good tennis player [2 Leinster medals as a youth] so I switched to tennis and I also played squash. So I had three sports I was involved in, in a very soft, competitive way. People always expected me to transcend sports, to be competitive in other sports - I never was serious about that: my self-analysis at 27 was 'ok Ron, you're an ok rugby player, ok tennis, you're not going to beat anyone'. That would be my analysis to nearly the point of 'no point in really breaking your back here because you don't have the innate talent'.
DG
A Crusader athlete (Murph_D) first became aware of you through an ad on TV in the 1960s. You arrive at an event and all the kids want to see your medal. He would like to know what the ad was for?!
RDIt was for – I think it was for the Dairy Board, I can't specifically remember. There was a guy called Noel Gilmore [who] was with the National Dairy Board, he became a very successful public relations man, a very nice friend of mine. I think it was the National Dairy Council 'Drink Milk' drive.
DG
Can I take you back before that to a comparison between athletics 'then' and now. How would you compare them, professional athletics seems more intense now: has that lessened the idea of sportsmanship?
RD (When myself, MS and Ron were chatting 'off the record', he had said that he didn't like to be questioned on the state of play re PEDs as it has no relevance to his era. So here we go, thanks mam for this question )
DGI wouldn't go so far as to say that about sportsmanship. It's innate. You either have a sense of sportsmanship...or you haven't. It's so different. It [athletics] was cavalier, it was 'Corinthian' in my era, in the '50s and it became more and more intensive; higher degrees of training. Then the abuse thing came in, abusing drugs, and the contemporary scene is not pleasant. It's not pleasant to reflect on and that is lack of sportsmanship because the essence of it is, you're changing the playing field, you are creating an unequal playing field and many great athletes who never get to win a medal at the Olympics, the postulation is 'would they have won medals if these other people weren't on drugs?'
I think the contemporary scene is ugly beyond extremes. Why? Why is greed, why is the amount of money that's in sport now...to me, it's incredible to see an athlete in, say another sport, [you] see an athlete who needn't necessarily be on drugs but a single athlete on a team sport paid xxxthousand grand a year. Now, what does that do for the Kenyan athlete who comes from a poverty backgound...what does the opportunity to become a millionaire do to that person? What are they going to do? This is the environment that creates the cheating. It's not the individual athlete as much as the system. The system is the manager, the doctors and the sponsors, the commercial world out there. This is the pressure. You take a nice young person, eighteen, nineteen years of age, he has influencing mentors who steer him incorrectly. [They] put him on to stuff, sometimes he doesn't even know he's on it. Then he gets the taste of what he can achieve when he's on this stuff. He gets the taste of making money, and if you're from a poverty-stricken, developing country and you make enough money in one race that you can go home and buy a couple of hundred acres and have a life for your family – build a house – huge pressure. So that wasn't there [in my era]. There was no incentive, in fact the opposite was there because in my career, I refused to run against certain people because they were taking money. In my career, there was no incentive to earn money because you weren't allowed to. The 'clean' thing: there was no question of anyone not being clean.
That's a totally different era. So, what was athletics like then? Athletics, as I said, was 'Corinthian', romantic...like Chariots of Fire. That's the sort of subliminal aura of athletics at the time. Within it were these immense interpersonal relationships and friendships with those you raced against. If a guy beat you earlier in the evening, you might be out having a beer with him later that evening. I'm not sure if that's still there.
Now, you have these Grand Prix races...which are paced... One thing, and this is my final point on the subject, the one thing, the beautiful thing that hasn't changed is the Olympic final. Quote: “the race”. The race has not changed. You can come with your world records, you can come with your couple of million a year earnings, you get on that starting line and the race is of the essence. That hasn't changed. That hasn't changed from when I ran in '56; the Melbourne 800 metres*, the Rome 1500 metres**, the Tokyo 10 000 metres*** - a lovely race – I think the American guy, the marine [Billy Mills], who came out of nowhere and won the 10 000m, that was beautiful, and the race is still of the essence. Now, the problem is the race is distorted too because nowadays, the guy on the line with you – some of them are so full of stuff, there's no way you're going to beat them.
Well there's no answers for that [from us] today, but thanks for that, I wasn't going to go near that area, so thank you.
RD
No problem.
*Melbourne 1956 800m
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTSGV34fI6g&nohtml5=False
**Rome 1960 1500m
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EBlQEoH-5U
***Tokyo 1964 10 000m
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOj0zjPzg-c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F5iCsymMj0&ebc=ANyPxKrctOH54y3MUzyTBPdu7WOyFeeJS5pmYmH2CE4QXWlwwwOihLu3ZCCRMC5J6LWhGHjngB2qRWCGJveicSsv_UuT_vMzJA&nohtml5=False
And just for good measure because you can't see this race too many times I know the outcome of this but still, with 300m to go, my heart is in my mouth as the gap opens and Delany closes it to devastating effect...
Melbourne 1956 1500m
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B8aMTHX8100 -
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DG
When you competed in the Morton Mile in 1958, in Santry, the numbers spectating were through the roof. These days, the numbers are only a fraction of that. What needs to be done to make athletics in Ireland an appealing spectator sport? [Chivito]
RDI don't think you'll ever make it a spectator sport again. You have to go back 50 years...the extraordinary formula in Ireland, was an Irishman against an Englishman! Brendan O'Reilly, the great high jumper, we had Eamonn Kinsella, great hurdler so we had 'the star' Hamlet [said with humour], Ronnie Delany and the supporting cast. We were beating a few! Eamonn was going to win the hurdles against a guy called Parker from England. I was going to beat most of the Englishmen I raced [smiles], Brendan was going to win the high jump. What do we Irish love? We love victory.
The average attendance at an outdoor meeting in America would have been below 5000. The championships would have been 10 000. The only athletics event to attract big crowds were the Olympics. Now England, slightly different, because you had White City. At European championships there, you might get 20 000. There was never a huge following, spectator wise for athletics.
What do you do to get it back? I think what they're doing now is putting on the Grand Prix. So this is destroying the mundane. So you get great athletes out in Santry, how many people do you get there? 1000? 2000 people? Irish championships...500. Where has the sport moved to? It's moved on to the telly. So the Grand Prix becomes the race.
Emotionally, I'd love to think the Irish championships were great events. Factually, many of our great athletes don't even bother to run. If they do run, they don't give the public value – they don't race. They trot around and run a half mile in 1:53 (not singling out the half milers, but that's what they do). There isn't that interaction, that intensity of competition.
What has substituted for the Grand Prix races is the pacemaker. What's the focus on? Time. What's it not on? It's not on the race. The essence of my era was the race. Me beating Ibbotson in Landsdowne Road, Ibbotson beat me in London. I love that race [in Landsdowne], I came back to Dublin, I'm the Olympic champion, he's now the world record holder and I beat him at Landsdowne Road in front of a full house. Tom Cryan, a writer at the time, wrote that people were throwing their hats in the air, their umbrellas in the air...that's a lovely memory I have.
again, worth a repeat
http://irishphotoarchive.photoshelter.com/image/I0000R7zpWPDxxEwBut to answer your question, I can't really suggest how to get it back. There's no way you can get it back because it was never [really] there, as a spectator sport, to get it back. What was beautiful was the 'flapper' meetings*, the small meetings in Dunboyne, Banteer [?]...all these little villages...that was a beautiful era in sport. Great athletes came out of there. Pat O'Callaghans out of the Banteers, you had the Dunboynes where I would run these places, they'd be running on newly mown medals! I'd never endanger my amateur status but these flapper meetings were bordering on not being that amateur, you could win a suit length or something like that. That was a beautiful era.
*https://books.google.ie/books?id=wTjjbXDQBT4C&pg=PA350&lpg=PA350&dq=flapper+meetings,+running&source=bl&ots=Rz95pS6zDt&sig=bkF2netSubyKrvnksES7hIRH8fo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjbgMno9anMAhVFNhoKHfrQAP4Q6AEIKTAC#v=onepage&q=flapper%20meetings%2C%20running&f=false0 -
DG
You had to travel to Villanova to get the quality of the racing circuit. Do you still feel the US is the best option for athletes now that they have access to the European race circuit? [Myles Splitz]
RDIt's less preferable but I still find that the formula for the sport now is Grand Prix. They can be very good here, but if you're not good enough, you're not in the meets. So you have to be in the absolute elites. If you're ambitious, I think you're better going to America where you have huge intercollegiate competition, weekly cross country in the autumn, you've indoors and you've endless outdoor races. I think that hones the racing skills I've been talking about and that substitutes for the hard training they do between events so what do I think? I think you should go to America and I think you should select a college that is in a good competitive conference. There is no point going to a south American conference where you won't get the quality of running. You need to go to an Eastern college or a Mid-western college to get the quality; you need to run against the Penns, the Yales, the Villanovas, the Providences, the Boston colleges – if you're not going into that area, your team mightn't even qualify for the national inter-collegiates. At Villanova, you'll be at the national inter-collegiates, if you're good enough.
DG
It carries on the 'great tradition' [of Irish athletes graduating from the American collegiate system] and that leads in to your thoughts on the current state of Irish athletics? We haven't had a Delany, a Coghlan or an O'Sullivan in a while [annapr]
RD
DGWell I'd suggest you mightn't be a hundred per cent right there. I think we've had Derval O'Rourke, we've had Sonia 'til recently, who still was relevant up to two thousand and something. That's fairly modern. You've had a number of great middle distance runners who are still inputting into the sport Noel/Nolan [reduction in sound quality], Matthews, almost contemporary athletes. Contemporary, you've Mark English who is outstanding. You have the 400m hurdler [Thomas Barr] who is incredibly good.
So what's the state of Irish athletics? We have some brilliant talent, we have some who should be competitive in the Olympics and we've a plethora of really [sic], quality runners. Now, I don't want to get into being critical of them...[but ] I could be critical about racing tactics, philosophy; training philosophy, mentality, I could go into all those areas: focus on personal bests etc. And losing the plot on 'the essence' is winning; the essence of the foot race, the hammer, shot, throw, hurdle...whatever it is, the essence is still, is what? It's the winning. I think that mightn't be to the forefront of Irish athletics.
I think what you have been saying, in a nutshell, both last week and this week is 'winning, focus on the winning'.
RDCould I say, that I don't think Irish athletics has ever been healthier and I'm marvelling at that because – I may have touched on this before we put things on tape last week – running as a movement, there's never been anything like it, I mean, the incredible love that there is for running out there, the incredible emotional experience for some people, the endorphins it's creating in people's lives; this is immense – the fellowship that's out there. You're moving from the elite on to the contemporary; the contemporary is quite inspiring to me. I don't understand it, even people like you. [I am] reading Irish Runner and trying to get to grips with it, what is this incredible thing that is running?
Because I was so selfish and so self-centred, to me, it was a destiny. I was gifted, I was intellectually capable of knowing I had a gift and chasing my dream. People now are chasing this beautiful experience of running....[however] I [do] want Irish Runner to focus more on the elite (laughs).0 -
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DG
I think you've shared an enormous amount with us and thank you for that. So, I think we can wind up with some short and sweet questions....First word that comes to your head:
DG
Talent or hard work?
RDInnate talent
DG
800 or 1500?
RD
DGLove affair 800, 1500, tough
Sweet or savoury?
RD
DGsilence......oh I think I'd be a sweet person
World record or Olympic medal?
RD
DGOlympic medal [after a pause and emphatically just as I'm asking the next question,] Olympic gold medal!
Tayto or King crisps?
RDDon't eat crisps!
DG
Red or white?
RDRed!
DG
Villanova or Crusaders? Nasty, sorry!
RDAh, it has to be; formative, Crusaders, the dream/beginning, Crusaders. Delivery, Villanova.
DG
Very well answered. That's it, thank you, so much!
RDThank you and may I wish everyone who reads/hears [this], get out there and enjoy your running, enjoy your sport, keep it up, go for it!
What did Noel Carroll say, Noel, who loved running [and] who did more than I ever did for running
“there's no gain without pain”!
It's nice to be able to pay tribute to Noel.
FINISH LINE
http://img2.thejournal.ie/inline/534227/original/?width=630&version=5342270 -
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Looks like a version of this was published in the recent edition of Irish Runner? It stood out as the best interview (and there were plenty of interviews!).
Hi B, correct eagle eyes Ronnie wanted to archive this interview so with his permission, I approached Frank Greally who agreed to archive it in Irish Runner.
The publication of the anniversary extract was a very pleasant surprise...
BG had the pleasure of informing me of our publishing achievement as she was perusing IR in bed. whoops did I just give away BG's bedroom proclivities......
I say 'our', meaning Myles Splitz and - most importantly - everyone here who contributed to the thread as it would not have been possible without the A/R community here on boards. So well done, and thank you all :cool:0 -
I had the pleasure of meeting with Ronnie Delany once again this morning. He turned 82 last month and looks absolutely fantastic on it. He sends his best regards to Myles/Luke and the whole A/R community and was thoroughly delighted with our presentation of a Heritage cut crystal vase on an engraved stand.
The pic quality isn't very good, my poor old device is dying so the engraving reads:Ronnie Delany
On the 60th anniversary of your
Olympic triumph Melbourne 1956
From A/R@boards.ie
Thanks to all who contributed by asking questions, transcribing, reading and chipping in to the presentation pot.0 -
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