Sir, - Frank McNally’s article about the incomparable Ronnie Delany, which mentioned the athlete’s time in Kilkenny, brought back vivid memories (“I was thankful I had filed away the obscure detail of who finished second to Ronnie Delany in 1956,” An Irish Diary, March 13th).
On one day in May, 1954, I was one of a number of very disinterested pupils struggling to draw a tulip. While gazing out the window of the art class in Kilkenny College, we were startled to see an unknown athlete circling our athletics track (situated on the site of the present council offices and towered over by the magnificent Ormond Castle.
Excusing himself from the class on the usual terms, a pupil, Clive Phillip, spoke to the athlete, returning to tell us that it was some guy called Delany. Weeks later, his photograph appeared in all the newspapers after winning the national 1,500m title.
At about the same time period, the headmaster’s daughter, Maeve Shankey (later Kyle), also trained occasionally on the same track. As it turned out, both she (Ireland’s first female track-and-field Olympian) and Delany were to be the outstanding Irish athletes of the Melbourne Olympics in 1956. – Yours, etc,
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DAVID GRIFFIN,
Banbridge,
Co Down.
