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The Summer of 1949 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.
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The Successors - 1964-1973  |
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