BERTIE MESSITT:BERTIE MESSITT, who has died aged 83, was considered to be one of Ireland's greatest distance runners.
He represented Ireland in the marathon at the Rome Olympic Games in 1960 and competed at the European championships in 1958 and 1962.
Also during his 13-year career he held 16 national records in distances ranging from 3,000m to a marathon. In the process he broke several of the records set by the legendary John Joe Barry, the “Ballincurry Hare”.
A member of Donore Harriers athletic club, then based in Islandbridge, he began running competitively in 1953. Athletics was then an amateur sport, and he worked full-time as a bus conductor.
He was well known on the No 10 route, and Candida of An Irishwoman's Diaryin The Irish Times,having encountered him, once wrote that it was "delightful to meet someone so pleasant on the bus".
He trained by running to and from his home in Shankill to the bus garage in Donnybrook. He often took time off at his own expense to compete in international events.
Born in 1928 in Boghall, Bray, Co Wicklow, he was one of eight children of Thomas and Bridget Messitt; four of his siblings died in childhood. He attended St Cronan’s national school and completed his education at Bray technical school.
After the second World War, a sense of adventure and the need for a job led him to join the British army. While training with the Royal Irish Fusiliers at Omagh he took part in his first cross-country race. Slightly built, he was delighted to find a sport that suited his physique.
Posted to the Middle East, in Ismailia, Egypt, he was selected to run in one- and three-mile races, winning the former and coming third in the latter. On his return to civilian life in Ireland, he joined CIÉ and took up running seriously.
The year 1958 marked a high point in his career. He broke nine Irish records with a best time of 13:44 for three miles in a race won by the Australian Alan Thomas in a world record time of 13:10.8.
Messitt’s times of 14:14.8 for 5,000m and 49:33 for 10 miles also entered the record books.
At the opening of Santry Stadium he ran in the three-mile race and finished behind Derek Ibbotson, one of the original four-minute milers.
Also in 1958 he ran in both the 5,000m and 10,000m at the European championships in Stockholm. His exploits that year won him the Texaco award for athletics. He qualified for the 1960 Olympics in Rome by winning the Irish marathon title in a record time of 2:28.40.
He led in the early stages in Rome, but by the halfway mark had begun to tire and he dropped out, exhausted, at 20 miles. The gold medal was won by Ethiopian Abebe Bikila.
Undaunted, in 1962 Messitt ran the marathon at the European championships in Belgrade and in 1963 recorded his best time for the event, 2:25.39.
Also that year he was a member of the Donore team which took the honours at the prestigious Waterloo road race in Liverpool. Messitt, aged 34, was first home of the team and finished fifth overall in a time of 37:58, a full 45 seconds faster than his corresponding effort the previous year.
Peter Byrne in this newspaper praised a “truly brilliant performance made all the more remarkable by the fact that his early training was geared to the marathon”.
Unfortunately, however, another Donore runner was later deemed to be ineligible for the race and the team honours went elsewhere.
Messitt founded the Shankill youth club in 1966, after he withdrew from competitive running. Later, in the 1970s, he founded the Donnybrook athletic club. After a number of successful inter-garage competitions he founded the Business Houses Athletic Association, which in turn launched the Dublin city marathon.
He is survived by his wife Maureen, sons Raymond, Alan, Stephen and Nigel, and daughter Lesley.
Albert John (Bertie) Messitt: born July 28th, 1928; died February 18th, 2012