Sir, – As someone who prefers sporting history to its modern trajectory, I often contemplate in awe the achievement of Sir Roger Bannister. In 1954, having spent a day at an Oxford hospital as a medical student he went to the nearby Iffley Road track and ran a mile in under four minutes, winning a race and breaking a world record.
He went on to have a distinguished career as a neurologist, which he said gave him greater satisfaction than his athletic accomplishments.
One could easily think those days were gone; that the keen amateur can no longer compete in top-level sport.
How refreshing it is to be proved wrong. On the opening day of the World Darts Championships, Cameron Menzies won his first match at that level. But remarkably he had been to work that Friday morning, as a plumber.
Matt Williams: Take a deep breath and see how Sam Prendergast copes with big Fiji test
New Irish citizens: ‘I hear the racist and xenophobic slurs on the streets. Everything is blamed on immigrants’
Jack Reynor: ‘We were in two minds between eloping or going the whole hog but we got married in Wicklow with about 220 people’
‘I could have gone to California. At this rate, I probably would have raised about half a billion dollars’
Wining a first round match may not be quite the same as setting a world record, or breaking a performance barrier considered impossible. But, on the other hand, Sir Roger was merely a student while Mr Menzies had actually fixed a burst water main and installed a kitchen sink. I wonder if he’ll get a knighthood? – Yours etc,
BRIAN O’BRIEN,
Kinsale,
Co Cork.