Sonia O'Sullivan

Sir, - The poignant piece by Tom Humphries and your front page photograph of the dejected Irish athlete (August 8th) brought …

Sir, - The poignant piece by Tom Humphries and your front page photograph of the dejected Irish athlete (August 8th) brought to mind an uncanny description of such events by her fellow-Irishman, Oscar Wilde.

In The Picture of Dorian Grey a character declares: "There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings.

"It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands."

Oscar had his own Atlanta and Athens, and many more to boot. His successes were tinged with human failure, yet when I need an apt quotation a century later I look to his works.

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Whenever Oscar became tired or depressed he would travel to far places and reflect for a time, sometimes with Bosie. Take the boat, Sonia, and come back refreshed. Those of us who do not even begin to comprehend the demands of your training regime and race schedules will wait patiently to gaze once more at the play.

And if you fail again there is not one among us who will carp, for we have the good times to remember, and it makes our own failings easier to endure. - Yours, etc.,

Michael Reynolds,

Ashford, Co Wicklow.