Interview Ronnie Delany: Ian O'Riordan finds the Olympic legend still has a fair turn of phrase 50 years after the win that shaped his life
Wednesday lunchtime, stuck in cross-town traffic, running late. Not badly late, just late - the worry is the person I'm due to meet has probably never been late in his life. Naturally he's been waiting, and when he offers a warm handshake all I can do is apologise.
"Not at all," he says. "I'm late all the time."
I suspect he's simply being polite. Anyone who has ever met Ronnie Delany will tell you he's unfailingly polite. And charming, elegant and gracious. He leads the way to a quiet area of the hotel restaurant and for the next three hours doesn't once break out of character.
(Memo from the sports editor: Ronnie Delany's new book worth a piece. Don't want to hear about Melbourne all over again. No more than 1,000 words.) This presented me with two problems. Delany's gold medal run in the 1,500 metres at those 1956 Olympics in Melbourne is so central to his story it would inevitably be revisited. And he recalls any chapter of his life in such magnificent detail that 1,000 words . . .
Anyway, Delany's most thoughtful and thorough account of Melbourne is now captured in his book Staying The Distance, published this week to coincide with the 50th anniversary, which falls on December 1st. It reads like a documentary, beautifully presented with dozens of classic photographs, and Delany the narrator.
The intention here was to take up the story of what happened after Melbourne. How Delany ran his last race at the age 26, surely still in his prime. How he has hardly run at all since, not even for fun.
Melbourne runs throughout the Delany story, can't be avoided. He chased his destiny, fulfilled it, and now embraces it.
"I don't do maybes," says Delany, "but it is terrifying to think about my life if I hadn't won. I can't actually conceive it. It would have been saying I was foolish to leave the Army, foolish to leave for America, where did I get all these foolish ambitions. I know that would have been very hard to live with.
"I also know there's never been a moment when I've regretted winning the Olympics. I'd like to think that in my own way I've managed being an Olympic champion with a fair amount of humility, and certainly without any stupid misconceptions.
"But I think the myth of being an Olympic champion is far better than the reality. Somehow, by conforming to expected behavioural patterns as Olympic champion, in a very small country, the reality of my frailty has never come through. I have always lived in the mindset of the hero, the Olympic champion. And that's the myth. The reality is I have human feelings, weaknesses, likes and hates, like everybody else, but somehow or other, in terms of the public, it's been a wonderful love relationship."
Throughout our conversation Delany is the focus of passing glances. Yet he never once looks around with that horrible air of celebrity, and repeatedly apologises if he's "starting to sound immodest".
"I can understand how people might think that after 50 years it must get boring when someone comes up to shake your hand, as if it was yesterday. But the warmth and affection I've enjoyed is immense. And there's no doubt I have been very comfortable living out the role of an Olympic champion.
"Of course you cannot go around full of the wonder of your achievement every day. And I don't really like to talk about the Olympics. It's usually thrust upon me. It's not even something you can really share, because no one can understand the totality of the achievement. So I think my introspective joy goes back to destiny, that I was destined to be a part of this extraordinary history."
During his teenage years growing up in Sandymount in Dublin that date with destiny was slowly realised. His elder brother, Joe, was his first athletic role model, but his pursuit of greatness in sport always came from within. He abandoned a prized position in the Army Cadets (leaving his father "aghast") and found a job selling vacuum cleaners door to door in Kilkenny.
"I would train every day in James Park, a sort of agricultural place. Stripping in a barn. My company were sheep and bullocks. And I'd say even they were amazed. 'What is this mad person doing?' And there was a sort of madness to the whole thing, in a nice way.
"The funny thing is I hated training. I was probably a little lazy, but I trained smart, and I brought a lot of my own views to the table. It was more an application. It was only when I went to America that I really believed I could be the Olympic champion.
"And I did love to race, had an insatiable appetite to win. Jumbo Elliott at Villanova was a great manager as much as a coach. The slogan in our dressingroom was 'Win, or bust'. Jumbo never put his arm around you for finishing second. The only expectation was to win. Like my team-mate Charles Jenkins would also be Olympic champion. I was a product of that environment."
Delany closed in on his destiny with remarkable momentum. On June 1st, 1956, exactly six months before the 1,500-metre final at the Melbourne Olympics, he became only the seventh man in history to crack the four-minute mile, running 3:59.0 in California. Later he was badly spiked in an 800-metre race in Paris, and raced just twice more that summer. The Olympic Council of Ireland confirmed his selection for Melbourne only at the last moment.
"I think it was a split vote in the end, but the only horror about it is thinking back now about what would have happened if I hadn't been sent. I think at that stage I did feel an element of destiny. There had to be. There was no moment in Melbourne when I didn't believe I was going to win. Once I struck and flew by everyone I was not going to lose. And there was no pain. You only feel pain when you lose."
Delany's moment of destiny was completed when he famously fell to his knees in prayer: "I just knelt down to bless myself. I can't remember what I said. I just knew I was in connection with the greater being out here. And that is sort of scary.
"But religion was huge for me. I was raised with all the scruples of a Catholic boy of my generation, and this faith in a greater being. I prayed because every race was like a huge crisis, with the risk of being beaten, running badly, or being injured. I wanted spiritual support. But I would always pray for the ability to demonstrate the talent I had. It was never 'let me win'. So I was cheating slightly."
Having fulfilled that destiny, at age 21, Delany was quick to realise his life would never be the same again. First of all he was a marked man whenever he toed the starting line. There was always pressure, and expectation, something he discovered when "only" taking bronze at the European championships in 1958.
"Life wasn't exactly a bowl of cherries for the years after. Everybody was out to beat me, and that made it tough. The media were tough too, and in 1958 I think they were a bit unfair. I did feel a little hurt then."
A series of Achilles tendon injuries followed, and the 1960 Olympics in Rome were a disappointment. Eliminated in the 800 metres he promptly withdrew from the 1,500 metres: "I have no recriminations whatsoever about any of my disappointments. I know I proved myself again as a world-class athlete in 1961, pushing Peter Snell to the line in an 800 metres, and winning the World University Games.
"There were three main reasons why I did retire when I did. The injuries were terribly frustrating, with such limited treatment then. There was also no money whatsoever from the sport. I couldn't even accept free shoes. But unlike today, a name like I had was a disadvantage. I was being paid and promoted as one of the images Aer Lingus, but felt I was going nowhere fast. I joined B&I for less money, and went on to become assistant chief executive. My career had started to become my driving force."
Delany formally retired in the summer of 1961, announcing it the same day as his engagement to Joan Riordan. "It's true, in a sense, that I've never run since. I couldn't afford to run around Dublin, because anytime I did someone would be trying to race me. And I never wanted to be perceived as the Olympic champion showing off.
"I'm also sad to say I'm quite dispassionate about watching athletics today. There are still some moments that raise the hairs on my hands. Sonia O'Sullivan in the Sydney Olympics was one of them. But the sport has changed radically, and the negative thing, in a word, is drugs. But I mean potentially, athletics is still the purest of all sports, and the only place I think athletics still has some purity, and I know this will sound contestable, is the Olympics. The magic and essence of athletics still comes through at the Olympics."
Staying The Distance by Ronnie Delany
is published by The O'Brien Press
