There’s a moment in Irvin Faust’s novel Newsreel, set in post-second World War New York, when the protagonist Speed Firestone and his future wife Carla Levine are lamenting the parlous state of the country’s middle-distance athletes. Talk inevitably turns to how no American has won the Olympic 1,500m gold since 1908.
“With one exception,” says Levine. “This year, a sophomore at Villanova won it. Ron Delany.”
“That doesn’t count,” retorts Firestone. “He’s Irish. He won it for Ireland.”
“But he’s beautiful.”
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“Beautiful? He runs like a chicken.”
“A beautiful chicken.”
By way of settling the argument, she invites him to accompany her to the upcoming Millrose Games where Delany is going to be the star attraction. That his nationality and achievement in Melbourne are the stuff of a serious work of literature by an oft-neglected 20th century American novelist shows the stardom the late Dubliner once enjoyed in the US. Athletics was then such a mainstream sport that the couple’s bickering about the aesthetic qualities of an Irish miler is a recurring theme in the narrative. Sometimes in rather cringeworthy fashion.
During another contretemps, Firestone confidently informs Levine that Delany developed his “herky-jerky style by running through peat bogs”. Not quite sure that’s an accurate description of a childhood spent in Sandymount. Later, she explains to her boyfriend how Jumbo Elliott, the legendary track coach at Villanova, was a remarkable character who often, “took in Irish plowboys and turned them into Ron Delanys”. As with most contemporary American press coverage of his career, Faust always addresses him as Ron rather than Ronnie.
[ Ronnie Delany, Ireland’s Olympic gold medal-winning athlete, has died aged 91Opens in new window ]
When the couple do fetch up at Madison Square Garden to watch the Wanamaker Mile, Faust describes Firestone happily joining in with the chorus booing the Irishman the very moment he strides out on the track to warm up. Apparently, the New York cognoscenti regularly gave Delany a hard time because they failed to appreciate how he often concentrated on winning the race in front of him rather than keeping a watchful eye on the clock.
“Why did you do that?” Levine asks after hearing him catcalling so enthusiastically.
“He never ran a fast mile in his life,” he responds.
“He runs to win. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. But I like records.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“Besides, he’s not American.”
“Again? What a schmucky thing to say.”
Even though at that point, she turns away from her jingoistic beau and starts chanting “Ronnie-e-e-e”, the tableau is jarring. Those of us of a certain age first came across the Millrose Games when impossibly glamorous footage of it was introduced by Brendan O’Reilly on Sports Stadium to light up gloomy 1980s Saturday afternoons. A flash of technicolour across our monochromatic lives, Eamonn Coghlan being feted as “the chairman of the boards”, presiding over a raucous Garden, became part of winter’s ritual. It was shocking then to discover his trailblazing and genial predecessor was so lustily jeered at the same venue decades earlier.
When Delany won the National AAU championship in 1958, finishing just one-10th of a second outside the world indoor mile record then held by Denmark’s Gunnar Nielsen, New Yorkers still gave him the dreaded Bronx cheer. And didn’t accept his post-race explanation claiming, “it’s the race that counts”.
Two weeks later, his victory at the Knights of Columbus Games marked his 27th consecutive indoor triumph but yielded a derisive response captured in the headline, “Garden Fans Boo Ron Delaney As He Wins in ‘Only’ 4.08.04.” After a similar reaction to his 34th straight win at the same venue the following year, he dismissed the now traditional heckling, telling reporters, “The New York crowds always boo me.”
Most of the city’s sportswriters, a demographic with huge sway, took the side of the runner in the arena. Columnist Jimmy Breslin, famously of Donegal lineage, observed in a sympathetic piece, “when the smooth striding Irisher tosses a 4.08 or thereabouts at them in winning his event the mob stands up and hoots as the time is announced.”
Dan Parker, the self-styled Broadway Bugle, was more vehement, describing naysayers as “ignorant bums” and “backward baboons”, before asking, “What kind of sawdust must occupy the cranial cavities of these muckers who still boo Ron Delany because he doesn’t run four-minute miles while winning all these races?”
Such was his outsize role in the sporting culture of the era that when the Irishman didn’t compete in 1960, Joe Williams wrote, “It wasn’t until the Millrose Games was half over we realised what we were missing, there was no Ron Delaney to boo.”
Against that background, it’s little wonder Faust sat down to write Newsreel in the late 1970s and still so vividly remembered “Delaney’s” impact on the brittle psyche of New York fans back in the day. Not only did it reveal something about the mid-century city but also provided a convenient device for showcasing ongoing tension between Firestone and Levine. Witness the couple taking in the last race of the New York indoor season when their differing opinions of the 1956 gold medallist comes to a sort of resolution.
“Carla was Carla, but I was a little noisier than usual as we worked our way up to the mile,” says Firestone. “Delaney, looking comfortable, waited until the last manageable instant, timed himself beautifully and won by two feet with his broad Olympic grin. This time I yelled, ‘You’re all right Delaney’, and Carla said, ‘Well, that’s progress’.”
