Hooper the greatest by a distance

ATHLETICS/Dublin City Marathon: The now annual conversation after the Dublin Marathon goes something like this: "Great occasion, great event. So who won? Ah, too bad there isn't one Irish athlete out there anymore able to win it"

It's unfortunate but true. The chances of an Irish man or woman being first home to Merrion Square this morning have never been slimmer. John Treacy was the last Irish athlete to win the men's title, back in 1993. Since then only Dublin's Gerry Healy has come close to repeating that when finishing second in 1999.

The women have fared a little better and Sonia O'Sullivan famously surprised everyone by winning four years ago. But it wasn't like she'd planned to run, let alone win.

Teresa Duffy's victory in 1998 was really the last time an Irish athlete who had trained specifically for the race actually won it.

Obviously the arrival of the elite African entries in recent years has dented the chances of an Irish victory. Kenya have produced the men's winner in seven of the last nine races, but it's not like their times have been outrageously fast. And the fact is Irish athletes still hold the three quickest times ever run in the Dublin Marathon.

The man most qualified to address this issue is Dick Hooper. He won the first edition of the race in 1980, and triumphed again in 1985 and 1986. He's also finished second, third, fourth, and fifth, having run the race nine times altogether.

The Dublin marathon is only one chapter in his remarkable story of 26.2-mile running, arguably the most rewarding of any Irish athlete.

Hooper will watch today's race and have a fair idea as to why so few Irish athletes are near the front. It's not lack of talent, or suitability. It's more likely a matter of mileage, or rather the lack of it.

When Hooper came to the race in 1980 he was 24 years old and had already run two national marathon championships (which he'd won), the Boston Marathon of 1979, a European championship and the Moscow Olympics.

These days, if an athlete was doing that at such an age he'd be labelled a certainty for burnout. If he were doing the mileage Hooper was doing he'd be labelled insane.

For example, Hooper would regularly run 160 miles a week in the build-up to the 1980 Dublin Marathon. That's not a misprint. But it is a lot of running. From his home in Raheny he would run to and from his work at the Central Bank, usually adding on extra miles on the way home.

On Tuesday and Thursday nights he would also do some sort of speed session with his club. On Saturdays he'd run 10 miles in the morning and 10 miles in the evening and on Sundays, he'd wrap it all up with a 30-mile run. Sounds like madness, but as far as Hooper was concerned, it was what it would take. "I was definitely part of the Arthur Lydiard school of high mileage," he says, referring to the New Zealand coach who revolutionised the approach to distance running.

"I remember when I was 16, I ran 100 miles a week for the first time, just to try it out. And by the time I was 18 I was regularly running over 100 miles a week."

In 1980 that kind of mileage was the rule. Today it is the exception. Hooper doesn't recommend that 18-year-olds start running that much, but he does think Irish marathon running is at an all-time low. For a country with a still strong distance tradition that just doesn't make sense.

"Changes in society have played a part in that, I know. But it saddens me greatly that we haven't had a marathon runner at the Olympics since 1992. We used always have at least two. And it was traditionally one of our better events.

"But I also feel it's an event where the ordinary runner can become an Olympian. Such as me. You need great speed and talent to make it now in, say, the 1,500 metres, but the marathon is just sheer hard work. A little bit of physical and mental talent helps, but it amazes me how so many of our better distance runners of today can't do the work that's involved in the marathon.

"I'm not saying you have to do the kind of mileage I was doing. I was always self-coached and self-driven, and if I had a coach then he would certainly have said no to the marathon so young. But then everybody in those days was doing the big mileage.

"But I proved it did work. I got down to a 2:12 marathon and my fastest 5,000 metres was 14:37, and my 1,500 was 4:03:

"Most people these days would laugh at those track times.

"I was lucky that I didn't get many injuries. I spent half my life going around with an ice pack somewhere, but that was only between sessions. And of course I was permanently tired. But I remember reading Brendan Foster say at the time that an athlete was someone who goes to bed tired, and gets up even more tired.

"And I'm sure I left a lot of races behind, and ran an awful lot of brutal races. But I was very good at peaking for the marathon."

Winning the first Dublin Marathon in 1980 suddenly made Hooper a household name. Certainly in Dublin. But once he'd heard the race was in the planning he made it his goal to win. Having run in Boston the year before he'd seen how Bill Rodgers had found such fame in his native city. How he was adored, worshipped by all marathon runners. The man. Hooper reckoned he could be the Bill Rodgers of Dublin. Within a few years he was.

He had already become embedded in the distance running scene in Dublin. His older brother Pat, who won the national marathon in 1979, got him involved with Raheny at an early age. Their father had died young, and there was always time to run. He'd done well as a junior, running the world cross-country junior race in Rabat in 1975, the year John Treacy won bronze. After that it was either the American scholarship route, or 26.2-mile running.

"Back then road running was really where it was at. Yeah, it ruined my track career. But the road runners were big stars and getting the shoe contracts and all that. Cross-country just wasn't as attractive. And I do regret that I didn't find out a little more about myself as a track runner. But I was hooked on the marathon. And it was my ambition to be Olympic champion.

"And the reaction to winning the first Dublin race was amazing. Even today I'm known as the guy who won the Dublin marathons. But in all the years I did run I never thought about anything else but winning it. And you certainly didn't think of running anything slower than 2:20. You just banged it out."

His 1980 winning time of 2:16:14 was then his best by 13 seconds. He was injured the following year and in 1982 took fifth behind Jerry Kiernan, though clearly still suffering after the European marathon championship in Athens just six weeks earlier.

Injured again in 1983, he was second to Denmark's Svend Erik Kristensen in 1984, partly compensating for his poor run in the Los Angeles Olympics that summer.

Then he found his peak again: "Winning again in 1985 was special, just one of those days when everything fell into place. And I think people identified with the fact that I'd had a disastrous Olympics, and had hauled myself back into shape. I certainly felt like my days were over after 1984."

He repeated that victory in 1986, making him the only person to win three Dublin marathons. But that, too, was far from the end. He ran his last Dublin in 1993, when he finished 11th. He won another national title as recently as 1998, and also collected major wins in the Pittsburgh Marathon in 1990 and later the Florida Disney Marathon. His last marathon was in New York in 2001, meaning he's run 42 to date. All of which he's finished, and exactly half of which he's run in under 2:20.

Now he's just waiting for somebody to fill his shoes and take the Dublin Marathon to heart: "I think it's possible, and I also think there's a huge opening there. If somebody came along now and ran 2:16 or 2:15 in Dublin, they'd be fairly heralded. So there's an opening there for anyone who can see it.

"And I don'tshare all the pessimism that's around after the Athens Olympics. In fact I think there's a huge reservoir of young talent out there. It just needs to be tapped into.

"I know that marathon running hasn't escaped the use of performance-enhancing drugs. But at the same time you think back to the days when the Ron Hills and the Frank Shorters were running 2:08, 2:09, just on hard training. That kind of animal can still be produced without drugs."