ATHLETIC:With Eamonn Coghlan's son John running in the famous games next week it's deja vu all over again, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

SOMETIMES IT takes a good clean shot of nostalgia to inject some life back into this sport. Hemingway always said the past was a moveable feast, and it feels that way right now when it comes to the mile, the boards, the chairman, and his son.

It was around midnight last Saturday when the text message flashed – “McCarthy 3:55 in Boston! Coghlan 3:59!” – and let’s just say the last time news like that arrived in was well before the mobile phone era.

It certainly felt like David McCarthy had gone where no Irish athlete had for quite a while: he’d run a brilliant time – 3:55.75, to be exact, the second fastest indoor mile in the world this year – and scored an excellent win on the bravely defiant American indoor circuit.

Still, it was John Coghlan in third – and his 3:59.32 – that surely passed the more important milestone, and in more ways than one.

Few things still capture the imagination of even the endangered athletics followers like the American indoor circuit, especially the mile, and especially that so-called golden era of the 1980s. Back then, Irish names governed the old wooden boards, and of course none more impressively than the chairman himself, Eamonn Coghlan.

So when his son comes out and runs directly into his footsteps, producing the first Irish father-son combination to crack the forever magical four-minute barrier – and the first such combination anywhere to do it indoors – it was only natural for that warm, nostalgic feeling to start running through some of our veins.

The best thing about the news from Boston last Saturday is that’s only the starters, too. The young Coghlan, still only 23, has moved on to New York this weekend, and later today will run another mile at the New Balance Collegiate Invitational, representing Dublin City University – then he follows that next Saturday with an appearance at the 105th Millrose Games, running for DCU in the college distance medley. Suffice to say he’ll need little introduction on that occasion.

McCarthy will also be back on the indoor track at the Millrose Games, running the famous Wanamaker Mile – and looking to revive that great line of success stories that began with Ronnie Delany in the 1950s, and continued first with Coghlan, then Marcus O’Sullivan, Niall Bruton and later Mark Carroll, in 2000. Those five men alone have won the Wanamaker Mile an incredible 19 times between them – and dare I say it’s probably about time another Irishman won it back.

In the meantime, just a couple of hours drive north on Interstate-95, Ciarán Ó Lionáird will open his indoor season this afternoon at the Boston Indoor Games, in what we’d describe in the business as a “stacked” mile. Among Ó Lionáird’s opponents will be his new training partners Mo Farah from Britain and the American Galen Rupp, who help make up that almost mystical Nike Oregon Project, under the watchful eye of former three-time New York Marathon winner Alberto Salazar.

It will be Ó Lionáird’s first race since finishing 10th in the World Championship 1,500 metres final in Daegu last summer, shortly after lowering his best to an amazing 3:34.46. Listening to Ó Lionáird do a couple of radio interviews this week it’s clear he’s very excited about his prospects in 2012, and indeed so am I.

All this comes against the beautiful backdrop of the past and present eras combining as one: Eamonn Coghlan will travel out to New York next Thursday to watch his son run at the Millrose Games, and where he’ll no doubt reminisce with his old rivals Marcus O’Sullivan and Ray Flynn. Along with Frank O’Mara, these are the men who still boast four of the top-10 fastest indoor miles of all-time: Coghlan’s 3:49.78 from 1983 stood as the world record until 1997, when Hicham El Guerrouj from Morocco finally lowered it to 3:48.45; O’Sullivan’s 3:50.94 from 1988 still ranks as the fifth-fastest ever, just ahead of Flynn’s 3:51.20 from 1983; and O’Mara’s 3:52.30 from 1986 still holds up as the 10th fastest ever.

These days Flynn lives in Johnson City, Tennessee, where he operates his sports management business, although he’ll be in New York next Saturday in his new role as meeting director of the Millrose Games. It’s a daunting assignment, given its long and distinguished history, and it’s no secret his first priority will be to inject some sort of performance enhancement back into the event, obviously by purely legal means.

On that note, getting too caught up in nostalgia is not always a good thing, as Flynn realised, and one of the first things he agreed as meeting director was to move the Millrose Games from its traditional home at Madison Square Garden, right on Penn Plaza, to the New York Armory, close to Washington Heights – or the short trip straight uptown on the A-Train. The new all-day Saturday schedule will also replace the old Friday night show.

It’s a bold move, and already being bemoaned by some, especially given the Millrose Games had been staged at Madison Square Garden since 1914 – making it the oldest continuous sporting event held there. Although that’s not strictly true, as Madison Square Garden has itself been moved before, twice, and up until 1968 was on Eighth Avenue, at the east end of Hell’s Kitchen – and thus nowhere near Madison Avenue.

Anyway, the problem with the “old” Madison Square Garden was the creaking, wooden 145m track, which wasn’t producing fast times anymore – or at least the sort Coghlan, Flynn and O’Sullivan were once capable of.

“If you don’t change, you become a dinosaur,” says Flynn, and the reality is the Millrose Games were in danger of going extinct. It’s too soon to say if the Armory will prove a worthy home: it’s definitely not the old wooden boards, but a proper, 200m mondo track, and properly fast too. Yet Flynn knows as well as anyone indoor running is more about atmosphere than anything else, and on that basis next Saturday is already shaping up as something special.

It helps that the Americans still have a bit of a love affair with the mile, even though the distance, it seems, has lost some of its romance with the rest of world. And the only thing Americans love more than the mile is the distance medley – which, for those who don’t know, is a 1,200m-400m-800m-1,600m relay, in that order.

Leading off the DCU team will be Joe Warne, followed by Brian Gregan, then Mark English, and finally Coghlan – and you can imagine the atmosphere if he happens to lead them home first.

Consider too their opposition will include a team from Villanova University, coached by Marcus O’Sullivan, and also Providence College, coached by Ray Treacy (brother of John), and it will feel like a throwback to that so-called golden era; if McCarthy manages to come out and challenge for the Wanamaker Mile then it might even surpass it.

Either way, the last time there was such Irish interest on the American indoor circuit was when the Irish dominated it, only this time the action from next Saturday’s Millrose Games only goes out live on YouTube, and there’s nothing particularly nostalgic about that.