SCHOOL DAYS/RONNIE DELANY:The grounding got at O'Connell's CBS and CUS would bring Olympic gold
MELBOURNE, 1956; everyone knows the story. Ronnie Delany bursts through the tape and straight into history. In his exultation on that golden December day, he thought of his mentors from his schooldays in Ireland, just three years behind him.
His early days running the side streets and playing fields of Dublin were the slow-building prelude to the white heat of Melbourne. At O'Connell's CBS he ran against the school bell, which tolled trouble for the latecomer. He was training before he ever knew it.
"I often draw a parallel between that and the African runners who live in a remote village and go to school. Now, I didn't live in a remote village but, in terms of having to run, I ran to get the train from Sydney Parade to Amiens St. When I got there I had to run up the steep incline of Buckingham St. You're running up Buckingham St with something that's often complained about, the amount of schoolbooks a child has to carry. You ran to and from the train at lunchtime too.
"I always used to try to beat my brother Joe. On reflection, it was serious hard training."
He first experienced relay racing in O'Connell's, joining a team whose members would all enjoy sporting success later in life. Niall Brophy earned 21 rugby caps for Ireland, Derrick Gygax raced in the Olympic marathon for his adopted nation, Canada, and Paul Cauldwell played senior-level soccer with Fairview CYMS. He still meets Brophy occasionally, who delights in firing across the same dubious line of badinage.
"Niall Brophy, when he sees me in public, often shouts across the room: 'Hey, Delany! You were the slowest on that relay team.' I'm not sure if that's true, but it makes for good slagging."
The pupils of O'Connell's enjoyed the unusual privilege of sports days held in Croke Park, owing to the school's proximity to the stadium. In later years whilst attending matches he would look down on the pitch and recall an early athletic success in the wheelbarrow race, for which he was awarded, he knows not why, a large pot of raspberry jam.
Growing up in Sandymount, he was surrounded by sport. Tennis, his first love, he played in Claremont Lawn Tennis Club. He turned his hand to cricket, hockey and even bowls in Railway Union.
"With the proximity of Claremont, Railway Union, Lansdowne Road, you were in an extraordinary cauldron of sport, where you could see all this quality sport being played. So it wouldn't be unnatural to think that there's only one thing in the world and that's sport."
His secondary education was at Catholic University School (CUS) on Leeson St. Before he began competing in races, he played tennis, cricket and rugby with the school. He showed most prowess in tennis. Cricket offered plenty of scope for running.
"In terms of my development ultimately as an athlete I did an extraordinary range of sports in CUS. I've two Leinster medals for tennis and I treasure those especially.
"We were so good in cricket, it was the one sport where I couldn't get on the team. I occasionally got on as a fielder.
"In rugby, with the perception of speed, I was put out on the wing. The fun of being on the wing was that the ball was so heavy in those days, no one could pass it. Secondly, the only time you got a pass was when your inner centre was about to be taken out, so he didn't pass it; he lobbed it. You very seldom got to run with the ball."
His racing career only began in his second-last year in the school. In 1952, he won the Leinster and All-Ireland Colleges' half-mile titles. A fine start, but his times were unexceptional by the standards he would later set. There was raw talent there, but it would have to be coaxed out, moulded into the exacting form of greatness. Attending CUS was advantageous in this regard.
Athletics coaching in schools at the time was a blunt instrument, wielded without deliberation. Jack Sweeney, his maths teacher, was different, bringing exactitude to the process.
"Other people would have seen my potential but he was the one who in effect helped me execute my potential. He kept a watchful eye on you and when he saw I had this ability he honed my sprinting ability at the end of a race. He taught me something I kept with me all my life: that you could really only make one decisive move within a race. So he taught me that fundamental and that was his contribution to me ultimately becoming an Olympic champion.
"You can't make two very obvious moves. If you make a move very early you have to have the stamina to sustain that or, if you don't have that quality, you wait till later and make a decisive move closer to the finish. That became, if you like, my trademark."
During those early races he felt for the first time the nervous agitation of the starting line, the swoop and buzz of butterflies in the stomach. He found he enjoyed the sensation, in a perverse way. More than anything, he loved the race. "If you'd asked me to run, say on a training track, a fast half-mile: no. Couldn't do it. But if you said to me: 'Run against Johnny Smith', suddenly the whole thing becomes different. I'm now racing. It was this excitement of racing, the prospect of having to compete against the other man, that was exhilarating."
Applying Jack Sweeney's tactical advice regarding "the kick", he retained his All-Ireland Colleges' half-mile title in May 1953. Around this time, running began to dominate his thoughts. He dropped other sports. Later in 1953, he became the first Irish schoolboy to break two minutes for the half-mile. After this, he started dreaming big, determined to stretch every sinew of the potential he was showing.
"Up to then I knew I could run but now I knew I had the potential to be a great runner. You couldn't share this sort of thought with a lot of people but I set about it almost with a fanaticism, to explore what my talent was."
