Madam, – I despair whenever I read that the Dublin City Marathon was the brainchild of the late Noel Carroll (Home News, May 31st). It is a perfectly understandable mistake, but a mistake nevertheless. Noel Carroll did, indeed, play a major part in making this huge event such a great success but he did not come up with the idea.
The Dublin City Marathon began as a promotional vehicle for the new pop radio station RTÉ Radio 2 and for 10 years the race was known as the RTÉ Radio 2 Dublin City Marathon.
I was an RTÉ radio producer at the time and was asked to come up with an idea which would keep the new radio station in the forefront of the public mind at a time of widespread competition from illegal broadcasters. I had seen the New York Marathon in 1978 and put the idea of Dublin having its own marathon to Noel Carroll, who was a regular contributor to programmes as PRO for Dublin Corporation. My vision was of an RTÉ-promoted people’s marathon, open to everyone, and not under the control of the athletics establishment but with a significant input from Dublin Corporation. Noel Carroll liked the concept and suggested I get my bosses to write to the then city manager, Frank Feely. The idea took off from there, with Noel Carroll as frontman, the Corporation’s support, the Business Houses’ Athletic Association acting as Race Organisers and RTÉ providing considerable sponsorship and promotional expertise as well as live coverage of the event. The first year’s entries came into my desk in RTÉ before we realised that a permanent outside office would be needed to cope with the demand.
Two years later, in 1981, I accepted a People of the Year Award in the Mansion House on behalf of Radio 2 for its role in introducing this great mass participation event to Ireland. – Yours, etc,