Dunlop got the Lansdowne wheels running

ATHLETICS:If the FAI and the IRFU think they are being visionary in revamping the old stadium, well, they've got nothing on the man who founded teh ground

GUIDED TOURS of brand-new, state-of-the-art, 50,000-seater stadiums can be a tiring exercise, so on the way home yesterday I stopped by the parents’ house in Clonskeagh for a cup of strong black coffee. My mother was in the kitchen making flapjacks, and when I told her I’d just been down to the opening of the new Lansdowne Road, she looked up from the mixing bowl and said with a smile, “I ran there once, you know.”

My dad was out in the pantry feeding the cat. I think he heard us, although he said nothing. This has been a sort of family tease for years. My dad may have run in the Olympics. He may have run 13 Irish records. He may have run against Ron Clarke and Abebe Bikila and Billy Mills. But he never ran in Lansdowne Road, did he?

Whenever the issue of his running exploits was raised, among family or friends, and how much his sons must have inherited his talent, my mother would keep quiet as long as she could. Though not always long enough. Sometimes, if the conversation completely by-passed her, she would casually declare that she once ran in Lansdowne Road – as if to say those sons had a mother too.

“When was it again?” I asked her, careful not to disturb the mixing of the oats and margarine. She reckoned it was about 1950, maybe 1951, at the Civil Service Sports, when she would have been seven or eight years old. She said she had a picture, too, as evidence (although that apparently has gone missing).

It was the 100 metres, or about that, and she made the final, naturally. Because her dad had been good runner . . .

“Well, you’re in good company?” I said – and that much is true. Great athletes from all over the world once ran in Lansdowne Road. World records were run there. Ronnie Delany ran some of his best races outside of the Melbourne Olympics there, and if it wasn’t for the first athletics association of Ireland there wouldn’t have been a Lansdowne Road at all.

In fact, listening to all the nostalgia about the old stadium yesterday, I was amazed how few people seemed to appreciate that it was built primarily as an athletics venue. Before rugby and soccer were allowed take hold.

Later I checked some facts, pulling out several trusty books on the subject, including Pádraig Griffin's The Politics of Irish Athletics, 1850-1990, and Irish Championship Athletics, 1873-1914, by Tony O'Donoghue of RTÉ.

Evidently, if it wasn’t for Henry Wallace Doveton Dunlop – and that alone is a name worthy of a place in history – then my mother, or anybody else, wouldn’t have run in Lansdowne Road. And if the FAI and the IRFU think they’re being visionary in revamping the old stadium, well, they’ve got nothing on Dunlop.

Back in 1873, Dunlop had far greater vision, and nerve, to purchase eight-and-a-quarter acres of what was essentially marshland in an area off Lansdowne Road, between the south Dublin railway line and the Dodder River. Most people said he was mad, but Dunlop knew what he was doing. He’d been fanatical about athletics during his years at Trinity College, graduating in 1866 with a degree in engineering. The first athletics meeting in Ireland took place in Trinity on February 28th, 1857, and for the next decade or so the College Races, as they were known, attracted increasing numbers of competitors and spectators. Dunlop had been a champion race walker, and had big plans for the sport.

By 1872, the College Races had far outgrown the Trinity facilities, and with that in mind, plus the desire to stage an annual athletics championship, Dunlop and some colleagues founded the Irish Champion Athletic Club (ICAC) – effectively the first athletics association of Ireland. (Among the 18 founding patrons was Sir Arthur Guinness.)

Although the first ICAC championship was staged in Trinity, on July 7th, 1873, Dunlop had already envisioned the larger venue and that December paid the Earl of Pembroke ground rent of £60 a year, on a 69-year lease, for the acres of marshland.

Then he got busy. Calling on all his engineering brain, Dunlop raised the ground using countless tons of soil from a trench beneath the railway.

He first laid a 586-yard cinder running track, then a cricket pitch, tennis and archery courts, and, lastly, three rugby pitches. He named his new venue the Royal Irish Parks Stadium, and the rest is Irish sporting history.

On June 27th, 1874, the ICAC championships were first staged there, and by the following year were attracting Ireland’s most famous athletes, such as Maurice Davin from Carrick-on-Suir, who won a shot-hammer double. Later, in 1884, Davin joined forces with another field event specialist, Michael Cusack, to form their own athletics association, better known these days as the GAA.

In 1876, Lansdowne Road witnessed its first world record, when the ICAC organised a dual meeting with England on June 5th. Having already won the mile, England’s Walter Slade won the 880 yards in 1:59.2.

By 1879, the Lansdowne Road venue was at its peak, reported in The Irish Timesas "a resort of beauty and fashion", although unfortunately the ICAC wasn't quite as successful and a year later was wound up, owing £4,000.

Yet that wasn’t the end of big-time athletics at the venue. Throughout the 1940s, the Clonliffe International meeting was staged there, on what was then a grass track. In 1948, the star attraction was John Joe Barry from Tipperary, affectionately known as the Ballincurry Hare. He lined up in the three-mile against two fearsome Americans, Fred Wilt and Horace Ashenfelter, and in the desperate sprint for the finish Barry allegedly cut inside a flag around the final bend to help secure the win. Needless to say, no one disputed his victory.

Standing in the 16,000-crowd that day was a skinny teenager from Sandymount named Ronnie Delany, and Barry’s victory had a profound impact, further instilling this young man’s desire to become a champion runner.

Over the next decade Delany ran at Lansdowne Road several times. In the summer of 1956, he was twice beaten there by the English miler Brian Hewson, who was being widely tipped for glory in the Melbourne Olympics later that year. Well, not only did Delany win in Melbourne (Hewson was only fifth), but he won again in the much-hyped rematch at Lansdowne Road on June 22nd, 1957.

Later that summer, on July 29th, Delany pulled off his greatest victory at Lansdowne Road, beating the then world mile record-holder Derek Ibbotson of England. "Delany Regains Mile Crown – and 25,000 Sane People Go Mad!" So ran the headline in the Evening Press, and the former athletics correspondent of this newspaper, Peter Byrne, still rates that as the greatest performance he's witnessed at Lansdowne Road. Which is saying a lot.

Maybe we’ll all get used to the new Aviva Stadium (and admittedly that is better than, say, the Henry Wallace Doveton Dunlop Stadium), but walking away from the old ground yesterday I couldn’t help smiling and wondering at the same time, about my mother running there, about Ronnie Delany and the pity there was no way they could have laid a running track in there – about all that is in past.