Mark Twain always said the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Which is all very well until you run up against the first deadline of the day and still have another 1,500 words to file.

So, sometimes the wrong word comes out instead of the almost wrong word, and I can still see Eddie Holt’s face falling into his hands when we provided several glaring examples as young scholars of this profession at Dublin City University. Holt was, as the many tributes in recent weeks have testified, a genius of non-generosity when it came to the English language. Economy mattered above everything else, although the only thing worse than using too many words was using the wrong one.

During one of our mock news days many years ago, where feigning interest was actively encouraged, my item for pretend publication concerned the launch of a new political autobiography. To which Holt, with his carefully jesting lecturing style, replied: “I’ve seen spaceships launched. And missiles, for that matter. But I’ve never seen a book launched.”

Style was more about taste, however – “like Dylan versus Keats,” Holt would say. And, having started out as a sports reporter in Drogheda, Holt knew well the style with which this game is often played. So he was a little more generous with the wrong word and the almost wrong word in the sporting context, as long as it didn’t involve the use of the word ‘disastrous’: “I’ve seen disastrous plane crashes. And earthquakes, for that matter,” he’d say, before his face would fall into his hands again.

Infallible

Of all his writing lessons – and the one immediately recalled on hearing of Holt’s death earlier this summer – that should be infallible by now.

The only problem is that many athletes still frequently describe their performances along disastrous lines. Or else we assume they will if the result falls below expectations. One glaring example of this in recent weeks was when Mark English finished last in the 800 metres at the European Under-23 Championships in Tallinn, Estonia.

Now, we may not have written the word disastrous, but some of us were certainly thinking of it.

English hadn’t gone to Tallinn for the experience: having won European Indoor silver in Prague back in March and European outdoor bronze in Zurich last summer, both he and we were perfectly entitled to believe he would win gold. He’d opened his season with a qualifying time for the World Championships in Beijing (running 1:45.83 in Hengelo), and followed that with an Irish record over 600m in Ostrava (running 1:16.14).

Then came some worrying signs of him suddenly falling below his own expectations. At the New York Diamond League at the start of June, English trailed home in seventh place, having finished a close second the year before. He only managed third at the Cork City Sports, looking more than a little flat, and was beaten again at the European Team Championships in Crete, despite having the fastest time on paper. Even accounting for the lower back injury he then carried to Tallinn, English was not expected to finish last.

Disastrous almost sounded like the right word for it.

Now, although still only 22, what has always set English apart is a level of maturity beyond his years, which he obviously needs to combine full-time medical studies at UCD with the effectively full-time life of an elite athlete. He’s never been one to make excuses, either, especially not regarding his dual commitments. He knew he was running poorly, the reasons for it too, but that it might take some time to find the right words to explain what was happening.

Fastest time

Then, after suddenly reaching his own expectations again, he found those words. Last Saturday, in the perfectly apt setting of the London Anniversary Games, English ran his fastest time of the summer to finish fourth, his 1:45.49 also safely inside the qualifying standard for next summer’s Rio Olympics. Only whatever relief which came with that performance was still minor compared to the actual disaster of Tallinn.

English only spoke about this week, and how, in his role as a Sky Sports Academy Scholar, he was filming in Dublin on the day that news emerged of the six students killed in the balcony accident in Berkeley, California. Two of those students – Lorcan Miller and Eimear Walsh – were his medical class-mates at UCD. English had shared a holiday with them in Croatia at the end of last summer, not long after winning his bronze medal at the European Championships in Zurich.

It turns out English had attended the funerals of both his former classmates the day after returning from the European Team Championships, and not long after that, he found himself on the starting line of a race he was expected to win.

Vivacious people

“They were two of the brightest, affable and most vivacious people I had ever met,” said English. “Were it not for my athletics I may well have been out there myself on a J1 Visa. Athletics is not life and death. In September, our class will be missing two vibrant young people who never got to fulfil their potential. Events like this put injuries and poor performances into perspective. My own worries paled into insignificance.”

Indeed they do, and the hope is those words won’t be lost on anyone still thinking of describing any sporting performance along disastrous lines. Because coming up soon for English, after the National Championships in Santry next weekend, are the World Athletics Championships in Beijing towards the end of the month, where he joins the small band of Irish qualifiers with no immediately strong medal prospects. There should be no more confusing the right and the wrong words to describe that.