Madam, - I refer to Frank McNally's Irishman's Diary of August 6th, which refers to Clonliffe Harriers' Billy Morton, the Morton Stadium and the original dream mile of August 6th, 1958.
While it is fair to say that world records at the Morton Stadium and capacity attendances are "a faded memory now", the lack of interest shown by the Irish media towards Irish athletics is in my view a contributing factor.
On July 25th last the inaugural Brother Morton Memorial Meeting to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Elliott's world mile record was held at the Morton Stadium, Santry. Despite the media's lack of interest, the largest attendance at an athletics meeting in Dublin in a decade witnessed a truly remarkable night's athletics.
While there was no world record set, the 3,000-plus attendance was privileged to see Betty Heildler, the women's world hammer champion, Kamila Skolimowska, the Olympic hammer gold medallist in the year 2000, Bernard Williams, Olympic 200 metres silver medallist and the Morton Mile itself - in which, remarkably, nine athletes ran sub-four-minute miles.
Regrettably, this athletics meeting warranted only a very small paragraph in the following day's Irish Times, and even less in Ireland's other national broadsheet. Then, to compound matters, a week later your newspaper reprinted in its entirety the news report of the mile event held in the stadium on August 6th, 1958.
The days of big-time athletics have not passed us by but rather, in my view, have bypassed Ireland's sports editors. - Yours, etc,
NOEL GUIDEN,
Honorary Secretary,
Clonliffe Harriers Athletics Club,
Morton Stadium,
Santry,
Dublin 9.