ATHLETICS:Whisper it, but it looks like we might soon have our first, proper, internationally approved indoor running track, writes IAN O'RIORDAN
PASSING THROUGH JFK recently, dying of an unmerciful hangover, I stopped into Hudson News for something to read on the last leg of my journey home. I was not in the mood for much of a search, so went straight for the New York Timesbestseller list, and picked up Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, which I remembered reading a small excerpt from, a few months back, in Vanity Fair. Let's just say it didn't disappoint.
I only finished Unbroken this week, rationing the last few chapters, not wanting the story to end. Some of you may remember Hillenbrand’s first and only other book, Seabiscuit, published nine years ago, and still hailed a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction. Unbroken is even better, and Hollywood is already at work on the film version. Oscar nominations, etc, will inevitably follow.
Unbrokenis subtitled A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption. And what has it got to do with athletics? Well, it's the story of Louis Zamperini, a wild boy from California, born in 1917, the son of Italian immigrants, who soon made his name as one of the most exciting distance runners in America.
In 1934, he ran a high school mile record of 4:21.2, and two years later, aged just 19, made the American team for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, in the 5,000 metres. Tactically naïve, Zamperini only finished eighth – but ran his last lap in 56 seconds, prompting Adolf Hitler himself to ask to meet “the boy with the fast finish”.
Zamperini immediately set his sights on the 1940 Olympics, scheduled for Tokyo, and in 1938 ran an American collegiate mile record of 4:08.3. By then he was also billed as potentially the world’s first sub-four-minute miler.
The rest, of course, is history: the second World War put an end to the 1940 Olympics, and instead Zamperini found himself on duty in Hawaii. On May 27th, 1943, on a rescue mission, his B-24 crashed into the Pacific, leaving him and his co-pilot adrift at sea for 47 days.
As if that wasn’t harrowing enough, he spent the rest of the war in a brutal Japanese prison camp, presumed dead.
I won’t spoil the rest of the story, except to say Zamperini is alive and well, living in the Hollywood Hills, and turns 94 next Wednesday.
You just never know what new adventures life has in store, do you? Which brings me to Ciara Mageean, who is about to start out on a new adventure of her own when she runs in today’s New Balance Indoor Games in New York. Last month, in case you didn’t hear, Mageean signed a rumoured six-figure deal with New Balance, the American shoe company which has a nice history of sponsoring Irish athletes, most famously John Treacy. The deal effectively makes Mageean one of our few truly professional athletes, in financial terms, in that all her training requirements, travel expenses, etc, will be covered by New Balance. Fair play to them, I say.
Of course, it also puts a little pressure on Mageean. The deal also ended any chance of her following the American scholarship route, as such endorsements are not allowed under their collegiate rules. So, still a few months shy of her 19th birthday, the Down youngster is now a full-time athlete, in the strictest sense, with all the expectations that come with that. It must be exciting and daunting at the same time.
The only pity is that Mageean has to go to New York’s old Armory indoor track for her professional debut. New Balance are sponsoring six invitational races to go with the high school programme, and Mageean runs the women’s mile. Our own indoor season is well under way, but I’m not going to bore you all again by lamenting the limitations of that, given our indoor facilities remain sadly outdated. And I’m not going to say another bad word about our sole indoor facility, in Nenagh; it has served its time and purpose, and indeed still does, staging the Irish Junior Championships last Sunday, and, this weekend, the AAI Games and Master Indoor Championships.
But Nenagh is not a modern facility, and definitely not the proper indoor arena that this country has been crying out for since c.1979.
Well, without getting too carried away, it seems those cries have finally and truly been answered, not by the Government – unsurprisingly – but by the Athlone Institute of Technology. If everything goes to plan, and there’s nothing to suggest it won’t, then by this time next year Athlone will boast a banked, permanent, six-lane, IAAF-approved, 200-metre indoor track, complete with 1,500 spectator seats and a separate indoor warm-up strip.
I’ve just seen the plans and it certainly looks the part, and unlike Santry and Abbotstown and the Dublin Docklands and various other planned indoor arenas, I believe this one will happen.
One of the driving forces behind the project is Prof Ciarán Ó Catháin, president of Athlone IT, who has a reputation for delivery, on time, and on budget. This week, Ó Catháin has been reviewing submissions from the seven contractors who have submitted to the tendering, with a view to having the successful contractor on site by March 1st, and out by the end of December.
“We have our planning permission, our ready-made site, and our business plan, so we’re full steam ahead,” Ó Catháin tells me, “and hopeful of a very quick turnaround. We own the site, with all the ancillary facilities there, such as car parking. So it’s not like starting from scratch, at some green field site. It’s no secret either than this can be built cheaper now than say three or four years ago.”
The expected cost is a little sensitive, given it’s still out for tender, but Ó Catháin assures me that’s not an issue: “We’ve listened to all the criticism, that there isn’t the proper indoor facility here. Part of our sporting strategy, not just for ourselves but for sport in the midlands area, was to build a multi-purpose indoor sports hall. Then we figured, why not look at putting in a proper indoor track? So we sat down again, looked at the figures, and decided to go with it.
“As of now this will be funded by our own revenue, generated over the last number of years. And we have about 80 per cent of the overall cost ready. So we’re still a little shy, and looking at various options. We’ll borrow the difference if we have to, but we have a number of other potential sources, including Fáilte Ireland, or Lottery funding. People have been very enthusiastic, but as yet we’ve haven’t seen that transferred to anything on the table. People might also want to put a name on it, too. We’re certainly open to that. But this will be the last piece of the jigsaw, really, in terms of Irish sporting facilities, built at a very reasonable rate.”
It would be enormous kudos to Athlone IT to finally deliver a proper indoor arena after so many others have failed, and enormous relief to our athletes, too. It’s unquestionably about time, and here’s hoping it can be completed on time, without delay, because you just never know what new adventures life has in store, do you?
