Ronnie Delany’s ‘Long Run’

 

Ronnie Delany praying after victory in Melbourne (attribute to Wikipedia)

Photo from FB of ‘Team Ireland’

Stamp of Ronnie Delany issued in Ireland 

to mark 50^th anniversary of his victory 

in Melbourne

Ronnie Delany’s ‘Long Run’

By Fr Seán Coyle 

LINK HERE 

My mother wasn't particularly into sports but she came running up the stairs on Saturday 1 December 1956 to wake up my brother and me with the news that Ronnie Delany had won the 1500 metres in the Melbourne Olympics, Ireland’s first medal since 1932. I was 13 then.

I met Ronnie for the first time in November 2011 at the annual dinner of the past pupils' union of O'Connell Schools in Dublin where he had studied for three years in secondary school. When I told him that he had been a hero to me since his victory he expressed a simple delight, a mark of true humility.

In one interview Ronnie said, ‘Religion played an integral part in my life and still does, I did resort to prayer for comfort, to create confidence and assurance and I always prayed intensely before my races that I would receive the ability to perform to my level of capability.’  In another interview in 1997 he said that before the Melbourne final, ‘I resigned myself quietly to the will of God and prayed not so much for victory but the grace to run up to my capabilities.’

After his Olympic victory Delany knelt down in prayer, ending with the Sign of the Cross. Later Ronnie said, ‘I had to say “thank you” to God for the gift I was given.’ When he came home from Melbourne he was presented with a specially commissioned piece of Waterford Crystal which showed him kneeling in prayer after the race.

Ronnie Delany died on 11 March this year, five days after his 91^st birthday. At his father’s funeral Mass Ronnie Jr said, ‘Dad was a man of great faith’ and referred to his ‘thankful prayer’ after winning in Melbourne. But he added that his father ‘ran to win and hated to lose’.

The day after Ronnie’s victory Joe Lynch, on Radio Éireann’s popular Sunday lunchtime programme Living With Lynch, sang a song written for the occasion by Dermot Doolan and Michael McGarry with the refrain, ‘Good lad, Ronnie, we're proud you won. You proved you were best in the long run.’ It also included the time in which Ronnie won: ‘Three minutes forty-one point two,’ a piece of information that has never left my brain!

In an interview in 2007 Ronnie said, ‘I’m very lucky. I’ve had a fulfilled life. My life is my family but I have somehow always managed to maintain the myth of the Olympic champion.’ He well understood the lift that his Melbourne victory gave to the Irish people at a time when life was tough for many, another mark of his humility. I met him for the second time some years ago after the funeral Mass of a mutual friend.

May God grant Ronnie and his wife Joan, who died only a week after him, the prize of eternal life after his ‘long run’ of 91 years. He never let us down.