A History of Ireland's Greatest Milers

28 April 2004

It's 50 years since the mile was first run in four minutes. Ian O'Riordan tracks Ireland's contribution to a great race.

Some said he might kill himself and it wasn't wholly inconceivable. Roger
Bannister, dead at 25. His brave attempt at greatness a step too far into
the unknown. Such was the mystique surrounding the four-minute mile this
time 50 years ago. For Bannister, it was a brick wall that simply needed
smashing. Even if it meant he'd expire his last that evening of May 6th,
1954, this was a race against time he wasn't about to lose.

"Ladies and gentleman. . . the time is three. . . " So goes the true story
of sport's greatest barrier, broken at last.

Those that said he might die trying had a quick amendment, that the
four-minute mile would never be the same. This time they were partly right.
Just 46 days later, the Australian John Landy improved Bannister's 3:59.4
to 3:58.0 and history hardly noticed. A year later, three men ran under
four minutes in the one race.

Yet, in other ways, much of that mystique has survived. Four minutes for
the mile is still the truest measure of any middle-distance runner, a
heaven that to be seen has to be believed. Half a century later, the number
of Irish milers that have joined the still elite four-minute list is 39.
And it's no ordinary list.

Even Bannister would have questioned the chances of a 41-year-old running
the four-minute mile. Four men from the same nation averaging 3:57.5
back-to-back, or a sub-3:50 mile on the tight bends of indoor tracks.
Whatever about running 100 four-minute miles in the one career. All other
great mile barriers, broken or matched by the Irish.

It's a list that rightfully began in 1956 with Ronnie Delany, the same year
he became Olympic champion in the metric version of the mile. Each of the
38 Irish milers that followed has his own stories attached, and does
various amounts of damage to the myth of the four-minute mile. Some will
leave Bannister wondering why he didn't run a whole lot quicker.

Delany tells the story of the four-minute mile he certainly hadn't planned,
and where thoughts of winning flooded all thoughts of the clock. Unlike
Bannister, he saw no psychological barrier. It all came wonderfully
natural.

Yet, Eamonn Coghlan was so sure of the moment when he would run his first
four-minute mile that he'd invited his father over to American to witness
it. When he became the first man in history to run a sub-3:50 mile indoors
it felt almost effortless.

Five years before Ray Flynn set the Irish mile record that still stands, he
ran 3:59.4 to break four minutes for the first time, despite a bout of food
poisoning the night before. It was like he'd walked through the barrier
rather than broken it.

And when Marcus O'Sullivan went down to North Carolina as a 22-year-old he
figured he too was ready to step through the apparently mythical barrier.
He ran 3:58.84, and promptly threw up. There at least lies one story for
those who consider the words pain and barriers as synonymous.

Together, those four milers helped develop the greatest of traditions in
Irish athletics, and at their peak were mixing it with the some of the
finest sporting figures on the world stage.

The beginning - June 1st, 1956, Compton, California

Back in the summer of 1949, John Joe Barry was single-handedly drumming up
Irish interest in the four-minute mile. That August he ran 4:08.9 in front
of 6,000 spectators at College Park in Dublin and according to one report
was "grasping at the shadow of a four-minute mile". But only those with a
soft spot for the athlete fondly called the Ballincurry Hare believe he
could ever have approached that barrier. A year later, he started that
grand tradition of Irish milers to attend Villanova University outside of
Philadelphia, but Barry was a stamina athlete, not a four-minute miler. In
a way, though, he was before his time.

Delany took the opposite approach to the mile. In the summer of 1955 he was
still known exclusively as an 880-yard man, and yet on wet grass in College
Park that August won his first ever mile in 4:05.08, lowering the Irish
record. "Give me another three years and I'll do it," he said when asked
then about the four-minute mile. He was after all only 20, but already no
one in Ireland could touch him in the mile.

Another winter under Jumbo Elliott's coaching at Villanova brought
considerable progress and a more streamlined stride. When freed from the
pressures of exams he headed for California, where the mile, said Elliott,
was the only distance to run. In that frame of mind he entered the Compton
College stadium on the evening of June 1st.

"I certainly wasn't on a quest to run the four-minute mile," he says. "I
was just excited and looking forward to racing again after my exams, which
I'd taken very seriously. I knew it was a fine field assembled that night,
but as always my only thoughts were about winning."

The organisers though wanted a fast mile and two US Army men were sent out
to set the pace. Delany had been advised to stay close, but only around the
last bend finally challenged the leader, Gunnar Nielsen of Denmark. That
meant a race, and Delany went all out for the win.

"When I crossed the line my first thoughts were that I had won. By then, of
course, all the time-keepers were getting quite excited, but I'd no idea
why. There wasn't any electronic timing then, so watches had to be
compared. Once the time was announced I was obviously delighted.

"But the truth is I never once ran for a time, never even thought about the
watch. I was always a racer and would only run to win. So my only concern
that day was beating the American Bobbie Seaman and Nielsen, who were both
great runners at the time."

Delany's time was announced as 3:59.0. Nielsen was given 3:59.1. Together
they became only the seventh and eighth men to run the four-minute mile,
over two years after Bannister's breakthrough at Oxford. Delany was still
just 21.

"For me anyway the psychological barrier associated with the four-minute
mile was disappearing by then. I still think that Bannister's effort wasn't
so much a physical drain as it was a psychological drain."

If the physical cost in Delany's effort appears minimal, there was a
financial one. He'd arrived in Compton needing a new pair of running spikes
and figured he could soften the local shoe salesman into loaning him a
pair. But the man wanted $13 and the best Delaney could do was to agree on
$10.

"I'd also been told that these adidas shoes were the only ones to wear.
Back then, of course, everything was so strictly amateur that I could never
have accepted a pair of shoes. I thought I might get away with borrowing
them.

"Marketing meant nothing back then either and it was absolutely no use to
the salesman to say someone had run the four-minute mile in a pair of his
shoes. So I had to give him those $10, all the money I had. Once word got
back to Ireland that I'd run under four minutes various newspapers were on
to me, and, of course, I mentioned the shoes. And they all loved that. Most
of the headlines said my four-minute mile had cost me my last $10."

By the end of the year it all proved good value. Delany lost a couple of
big mile races at home that summer, but still went to Melbourne in December
with the confidence of being able to mix it with any of the world's
four-minute milers, by then numbering 10, six of which were in the
Olympics. And times mean nothing in an Olympic final. It's purely that
desire to win, which by then only Delany had perfected.

The successors - 1964-1973

In the two years after winning his Olympic title, Delany would only twice
more achieve the four-minute mile - on both occasions in world-record
races.

In July, 1957, England's Derek Ibbotson ran 3:57.2 in London's White City
to break Landy's world record, and Delany was second in 3:58.8.

In August, 1958, he was home in Dublin for one the greatest miles ever
assembled, where Australia's Herb Elliott improved Ibbotson's record to
3:54.5. Delany was third in 3:57.5.

"That to me was when the mile race entered its next era, the modern era if
you like. Before that, the top milers like myself would never do more than
40 or 50 miles a week, but Elliott would have doubled that, and was so much
more strength based."

In just two years the mile had moved on from Delany and his contemporaries.
But Ireland's next four-minute miler was a long time coming, and came in
the unlikely form of Basil Clifford.

Though first shining in the Irish Youths mile of 1957, Clifford - a native
of Inchicore - seemed a long way from the refined talents of Delany. He
worked for the Tony Farrell bakery in Blackrock and part of his training
involved running up the steps of the shop with bags of flour on his back.

Clifford was running well in 1964, but that August only accepted an
invitation to run the Emsley Carr mile in London after Tom O'Riordan pulled
out with injury. John Whetton of England won as expected in 3:58.95, and
Clifford surprised even himself by running 3:59.80.

Thus, over eight years after Delany, he became only the second Irish
athlete to run the four-minute mile. Later, he worked in a gun factory in
Birmingham, where a tragic explosion in 1973 ended his life.

The third man, Derek Graham, was a more established miler and in August
1966 ran 3:59.40, later representing Britain. Only after Frank Murphy in
1968 and John Hartnett in 1973 - two more of the Villanova milers - did the
Irish four-minute mile club accept a more open policy.

The record breakers - 1975-1983

In May 1975 Eamonn Coghlan invited his father, Bill, to visit him at
Villanova. That happened to coincide with a mile race in Pittsburgh and
Coghlan figured the perfect way to impress his father was to run under four
minutes. He'd run a 1,600-metre relay split well under that time a few
weeks before and knew he was ready.

"Then we had this fight," says Coghlan, "a meaningless tiff over nothing.
And I decided to disappear and forget about my father and this mile.
Luckily, we sorted that out in time to go to Pittsburgh, and I ended up
winning in 3:56.2. And it didn't hurt at all.

"Because of that, I was invited down to Kingston in Jamaica the following
weekend, where Filbert Bayi of Tanzania was going for the world record,
which he got by running 3:51.0. I managed to get third in 3:53.3, which I
only discovered that night in the bar was a European record.

"And that one did hurt. It was one of the few times I felt my legs totally
buckling under me in the last 100 metres."

Within a single week Coghlan had joined the elite milers of the world, but
it was another eight years before he achieved his greatest goal - the
3:49.78 world indoor mile record on February 27th, 1983. That he did it
indoors was to him only fitting.

He often recalls the time they first built the old 200-metre wooden track
behind the football field at Villanova. One evening he sneaked in before it
was finished and developed a rhythm that was to come so naturally
throughout his career.

"I just loved the feeling of the indoor track, the tight bends and the
close space. I felt like a little racing car going around. And put that
somewhere like Madison Square Garden where you also get the crowd and to me it was just like putting on a show.

"It's true that outdoors I wouldn't have got that same sort of buzz. It
just felt so much more open. As a result, I probably did put more of a
focus on indoor running."

Coghlan travelled to the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey that Sunday night
in 1983 with only one thing on his mind. The passing of his old coaches
Jumbo Elliott and Gerry Farnan and his father Bill in the period before had
provided the final motivation. He was going to be the first man under 3:50
indoors.

"Then the original meeting was cancelled because of a snow storm. Normally,
the US championships on the last Friday of February was the last meeting of
the season, but the organiser agreed to stage the Meadowlands meeting that
Sunday if I was so sure of running sub-3:50. It went out live on TV between
the featured NBA game, but I had all my splits worked out and I knew I
would do it. It took an effort of course to win that race, but it wasn't
like I'd broken any pain barrier."

As it turned out, the man chasing Coghlan to the line that day was Ray
Flynn, who the summer before in Oslo had improved the Irish outdoor record
to 3:49.77. A native of Longford, Flynn joined the four-minute-mile club at
the Penn Relays on the last day of April 1977.

"I have very vivid memories of that day," says Flynn, "partly because I'd
got some kind of food poisoning the day before, and I was quite sick going
into that race. I know I'd taken Epsom salts the night before and I didn't
think I'd even be able to get to the start line. As it turned out, it was
won in 3:54 or something and I was disappointed not to run a little faster.
Of course, it was a big thrill to break four minutes for the first time,
but it did come fairly easy."

Flynn had aspired to being a world-class miler long before, having won both
the Irish and English schools mile before he took the US scholarship route
to Tennessee. He looks back now on the summer of 1982 and knows he was part of the golden era for milers.

"One of the main reasons I ran so fast was from racing so much at that
level. And that's what it's all about. The more races you get at that level
the faster you start believing you can go. And I always thought secretly
that I was going to break 3:50 that day."

Just two weeks before the 3:49 he'd run 3:50.54, also in Oslo. That night
of July 7th he took the lead at the bell, and was passed by Steve Scott
with 300 metres to go. At the finish Scott marginally missed the world
record, running 3:47.69. It went down as Scott's greatest missed chance of
real glory.

John Walker set a New Zealand record of 3:49.08 in second, and in third
Flynn improved his own Irish record to 3:49.77.

"Now that was hard, and I was quite ill afterwards. I recall sitting on the
side of the track for 10 or 15 minutes and not being too coherent. But I
never once thought the record would last that long, and it's still a
surprise to me that it still stands.

"Especially with the rate of good runners Ireland was producing at the
time. These days we're not producing the same kind of runners, mostly
because of lifestyle changes, so who knows how much longer it will last?

"And when I was second to Coghlan in that indoor race a year later, I was
the only one listening so closely to his time, even though indoors and
outdoors are so different. The fact that my time was still that 100th of a
second faster meant a lot to me."

In the three years of 1981-1983, Flynn ran in total 44 four-minute miles.
By the indoor season of 1990 he'd run 89, but then injuries finally got the
better of him. So the honour of becoming the first Irishman to run 100
four-minute miles - and one of only three men in history - fell to Marcus
O'Sullivan.

First, he had to break through the barrier - achieved on January 22nd,
1983, down in Chapel Hill, North Carolina - on one of the slowest indoor
tracks in America.

"What I remember most about that race was being totally thrilled with the
time, and then throwing up soon afterwards. But to me it meant an awful
lot. I'd grown up with the four-minute mile still holding so much magic so
to actually do it was a big deal."

Now head coach at his old alma mater of Villanova, O'Sullivan was soon
running four-minute miles like clockwork. But, by 1994, he found his old
motivation waning and he considered retirement.

"I mentioned this to Kim McDonald and he said I was mad. First of all
because I was making too much money. Just then people were making a big
deal about Steve Scott and John Walker achieving 100 four-minute miles.
There were still legends to me, athletes I still look up to, and the chance
to equal something only they'd achieved really inspired me."

With a more diligent approach to his training, O'Sullivan racked up 24
four-minute miles between 1995 and 1997, and set himself up perfectly for
the glorious crowning of his 100th four-minute mile at Madison Square
Garden in February 1998.

The Irish supremacy - August 17th, 1985

With such a talented team of Irish milers on the scene it was inevitable
that someone like John O'Shea of GOAL would think of the wider benefits. He
wanted the dream team of Coghlan, Flynn, O'Sullivan and Frank O'Mara to
attack the world record in the four-mile relay, and set up the perfect
stage at the Belfield track in Dublin.

"I remember John getting on to me about running," says Coghlan, "and I told
him no way, that I hadn't done a track session in six months because of
injury. I knew I was in no shape to run the mile and just the night before
we had a real blow-out over it. I think he actually called me a waster.
That's how mad we both were.

"Then that morning Noel Carroll called up, partly to apologise to John.
Somehow, he managed to convince me to give it a go and I ended up winning
the first leg bang on four minutes. Noel always claimed after that it was
the best mile I ever ran."

Inspired by Coghlan, the team went on to clock 15:49.99, anchored by Flynn,
thus establishing the world record. To this day, one of the few pictures
Flynn has on the wall of his athletics agency office in Tennessee is of
that team.

"I know even I was pushing not to have Coghlan on the team," says Flynn. "A
week or so before we'd raced together in a road mile over in Minneapolis,
and Eamonn had run 4:22. So he was really in bad shape. Terrible shape. The
other guys mightn't admit to it, but we were all trying to push him off our
team. We just didn't think we'd break the record with him on board.

"But Eamonn was such a competitor that he was able to produce that mile
almost naturally, even in his worst possible condition, helped by the fact
that John Treacy was on the B-team and chasing him down. Now I'm so happy
that he was part of it, and gave the whole thing so much more credibility."

The next generation - Another 50 years

That the standard of Irish milers is now in decline is universally
accepted. The last time any performance made headlines was in February 1994
when Coghlan, three months past his 41st birthday, won a low-key indoor
race at the Harvard track in Boston. His time was 3:58.15, making him the
first four-minute miler in the world past the age of 40.

"That achievement is very special to me," says Coghlan. "There's no doubt
I'd felt a bit of a void there when I'd first retired, that I just wasn't
as self-fulfilled as I should have been. And there's no doubt not winning
an Olympic medal had something to do with that.

"There were a few people trying to break that barrier at the time, such as
Walker and Scott as well as Dave Moorcroft. I figured I'd give it a go, use
it as some new motivation to give my career the ending that I felt it
needed."

But it's not just the standard of the mile that's in decline, it's also
interest around the world. The US indoor circuit is at its lowest in well
over 50 years and so many great races like the Dream Mile and the Golden
Mile have become predictable processions for the Africans. Even in US
colleges, the mile is almost totally replaced by the 1,500 metres.

"It's sad that the mile is not raced so much anymore," says Flynn. "In our
time, we could run two or three in a week. I remember once running three in
four days. Those opportunities aren't there anymore and I think that has
skewed the statistics. It wasn't that we were all that much better."

It's seems impossible, though, that the first 50 years of Irish milers will
be ever be rivalled.

But they've left behind a legacy worthy of its time.

Ireland's 39 four-minute milers

(Including Northern Ireland athletes subsequently representing Britain and
those declaring for Ireland) - (Subsequent personal best in brackets, i =
indoors)

Jun 1st, '56 Ronnie Delany 3:59.0 (3:57.5, '58)

Aug 3rd, '64 Basil Clifford 3:59.80

Aug 13th, '66 Derek Graham 3:59.40 (3:59.26, '66)

Jun 1st, '68 Frank Murphy 3:58.6 (3:58.1, '69)

May 12th, '73 John Hartnett 3:58.3 (3:54.7, '73)

May 10th, '75 Eamonn Coghlan 3:56.2 (3:49.78i, '83)

Aug 30th, '75 Jim McGuinness 3:59.2 (3:55.0, '77)

May 1st, '76 Niall O'Shaughnessy 3:58.1 (3:55.4i, '77)

Jun 19th, '76 Paul Lawther 3:58.49 (3:57.81, '83)

Jun 19th, '76 Jerry Kiernan 3:59.12

Apr 30th, '77 Ray Flynn 3:59.4 (3:49.77, '82)

Jun 24th, '80 David Taylor 3:59.19 (3:54.48, '83)

Jun 23rd, '81 Frank O'Mara 3:58.82 (3:51.06, '86)

Jan 22nd, '83 Marcus O'Sullivan 3:58.84i (3:50.94i, '88)

Jul 13th, '83 Tommy Moloney 3:57.70 (3:54.68, '86)

Jun 10th, '84 Steve Martin 3:56.71 (3:56.36, '86)

Jul 3rd, '84 Paul Donovan 3:55.82

Jul 9th, '85 Enda Fitzpatrick 3:56.36

Jun 14th, '86 Gerry O'Reilly 3:54.63

Jul 8th, '86 Eugene Curran 3:58.54

Jul 13th, '86 Mark Kirk 3:59.67

Jul 18th, '86 Peter McColgan 3:59.37

Jul 7th, '87 Seán O'Neill 3:58.42

Jan 31st, '88 Frank Conway 3:58.32i (3:56.78i, '89)

Feb 6th, '88 Kieran Stack 3:59.4i

Jul 5th, '88 Séamus McCann 3:59.84

May 30th, '91 Davey Wilson 3:59.9

Jul 5th, '91 Niall Bruton 3:59.23 (3:53.93, '96)

Jul 9th, '93 Mark Carroll 3:58.64 (3:50.62, '00)

Jun 25th, '94 Des English 3:58.71

Jun 25th, '94 Shane Healy 3:59.23

Sep 4th, '94 Gary Lough 3:59.48 (3:55.91, '95)

Apr 1st, '95 Ken Nason 3:58.91 (3:58.09, '95)

Sep 5th, '98 James McIlroy 3:59.48

Jun 27th, '99 James Nolan 3:56.31 (3:54.62, '03)

Aug 7th, '99 Brian Treacy 3:59.91

Apr 29th, '00 Gareth Turnbull 3:57.89 (3:57.61, '02)

Oct 29th, '00 Andrew Walker 3:58.96

Mar 2nd, '03 Alistair Cragg 3:59.94