Coghlan Still Has His Sights Set on a Gold

Ireland is a poor country. For generations, it raised its sons for export only. It was crippled with religious wars that kept the poor poorer and progress infinitesimal. It stood in the fog and mists of the North Atlantic and dreamed of places where the sun shone and coconut palms waved and the heat didn’t come from peat bogs. Its songs were as sad as moonlight over Tralee.

It had few heroes. It had the brave men of the Easter Uprising, a Charles Stewart Parnell, Daniel O’Connell, Padraic Pearce, the martyrs of 1916, but its statues were of British generals and Italian saints.

Sports heroes were in as short supply as military or political ones. There was an occasional pugilist, like the storied Mike McTigue, who won his championship from the singular Senegalese, Battling Siki. Siki was so ignorant of history and tradition that he fought the Irishman in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day, a bit of reckless bravado that was bound to cost him his title even if they had to wake McTigue to tell him about it.

You can imagine then with what great joy this nation greeted the Great Event of 1956, when an Irishman won the gold medal in the Olympic mile at Melbourne. The Games, themselves! Whisht, man! Ron Delany ministered to group esteem in old Erin in a way no one had since the Battle of the Boyne.

If it didn’t set off dancing in the streets, it set off singing in the pubs. And it set a generation of young Irishmen on the tracks of the republic to see if the feats of the great Ron could be duplicated.

The best of these was to be Eamonn Coghlan, although there was a brief flurry in the early ‘50’s when the Ballincurry Hare himself, John Joe Barry, announced that he had broken the four-minute mile barrier--in practice.

Since the only witnesses to this momentous event, which predated Roger Bannister’s official feat by a year, were members of the Ballincurry Hare’s immediate family and a few stragglers on their way to the pub opening or late Mass, the record books largely ignored this significant milestone in track and field history, and the Ballincurry Hare never further troubled the record books when he arrived in America and faced the perils of electronic timing.

Coghlan was another matter entirely. Eamonn came along at a time when his coaches encouraged him to ignore time and to beat the field, not the clock. “They wear out runners young in Americy, bothering with the watches,” they told him confidentially.

Eamonn followed a well worn path from the green vales of Ireland to the ivy halls of Villanova, where the coach, Jumbo Elliott, made a specialty of training young Irish runners for the rigors of world competition. Delany was his prize pupil. Unless you count the Ballincurry Hare himself, which few did.

Eamonn became Jumbo’s new green hope. Eamonn ran to win, not to speed, and he won two NCAA titles and one in the AAU in the mile by 1976. He was considered the most dangerous Irishman in the Olympic mile at Montreal since the great Delany.

“All the signs were there,” Coghlan recalls today. “It was 20 years, almost to the day, since Delany won his gold. He had graduated from Villanova, I had graduated from Villanova. The omens were right.”

Delany had the great Aussie, John Landy, the world’s second sub-four-minute miler, to beat. Coghlan had the world record-holding New Zealander, John Walker.

For two years, Coghlan hung a sign on his wall: “July 31, 1976.” It was to be his date with destiny, the second-greatest date in Irish track and field history.

Instead, it was 1916 all over again. The race was a tactical disaster, set up by what Track & Field News called “the cruelest set of heats in history.”

Twenty-five runners went under 3:40 in the prelims, carried along by a suicidal pace, so that the final was full of exhausted runners. The race was almost won by a German half-miler, Paul-Heinz Wellmann, who sprinted past Coghlan for third place and almost caught winner Walker, who just staggered home the last 200 meters.

Agonizes Coghlan: “The pace was so slow (2:03.3 for the half) that I had to take the lead. I was the rabbit. I was pulling the train. Walker was confused, too, but had enough strength to win. I didn’t.”

Finishing fourth in an Olympics is almost worse than finishing last. But in 1980, Eamonn did it again. Jumping up to the 5000 meters at the Moscow Games, he took on the mighty Ethiopian, Miruts Yifter, who looked like the 1,000-year-old man but ran like a schoolboy.

Once again, Coghlan took the lead with a lap to go. Once again, people he had beaten in the heats flashed by him with meters to go. Once again, he finished fourth.

The harp that once through Tara’s halls did not resound once again for an Irish runner, but between Olympics, Eamonn rescued a measure of fame. He became a legend of the indoor sport.

Disappointed outdoors, he became unbeatable on the plank floors of the arenas, setting three world records and winning nearly 10 out of every 10 races on the wooden tracks of winter. He even got his own nickname. If Chairman of the Boards does not have quite the ring of the Ballincurry Hare, it is at least honestly come by, since Eamonn ran into history on lumber.

“I don’t know what it is,” he marvels. “I was running on Sunset Boulevard only the other day and, as I came on a section that is boarded over and under repair and I found myself picking up speed on it without trying.”

If the Seoul Olympics can be moved indoors and run on wood, Eamonn might just get Ireland another Olympic medal.

Even outdoors, he thinks it is not impossible. Eamonn will run the mile in the Times/GTE Indoor Games next February at the Forum, where he set the world 2000-meter mark this year, in an event he hopes will kick off his quest for gold in the 10,000 at Korea in ’88.

The lights along the Liffey are waiting. The sports from Kilcock to Connemara are ready to raise a pint. A gold for Ireland is due even though the wall is getting crowded. Why, there have been four now in only 60-odd years.

Sure, they’re becoming a regular world power. Like the Red Roosians. And they can say to Eamonn, “Sure, we have all the fourths we need now, haven’t we?”