Families remain divided over the villain

ing champion. Tisdall rooted about in his gear bag, dug out a hand-saw and proceeded to help O’Callaghan smooth down the spikes.

‘We both filed them down,’ he recalled.

O’Callaghan had two throws left. The first was an improvement but left him three inches behind.

Before his final throw, O’Callaghan heard an Irish voice call out, ‘Give it a go, Pat’. He settled himself, took three turns, before launching the hammer 176 feet, 11 and a half inches.

Broad-backed and handsome, the dual Olympic champion was later offered the role of Tarzan by Louis B Mayer, but turned it down.

Some 52 years later, the two friends made a sentimental return journey to Los Angeles before the 1984 Olympics where Tisdall recalled a littleknown story about competing in the decathlon back in ’32.

‘Somebody dropped out and I spent the last two days competing from dawn till dusk, three events of which I’d never even tried before,’ he smiled.

If Tisdall was versatile, Ronnie Delany was a miler, whose magical moment came in 1956 in Melbourne where he became the Olympic 1,500m champion on December 1.

Just 21, the callow Dubliner kneeled and said a prayer after he crossed the line in triumph. Always religious, he felt God was on his shoulder that day.

‘I’d every faith I’d get there (Melbourne). There were issues. I don’t know what they were. Someone asked me did I want to know but I didn’t.

‘For years, I thought the casting vote of Lord Michael Killanin sent me to the Olympics,’ he said.

The Villanova athlete missed a month of the summer through injury and felt that ‘was a blessing’ going to Melbourne where he was the youngest of 12 finalists.

Why did he think he could win? ‘On common sense,’ he recalled.

‘I’d run a four-minute mile, the seventh man in the world to do that, I was probably the fastest half-miler in the field and was accustomed to winning. I only had one young objective in racing, and that was to win,’ recalled Delany.

‘I said to myself “I can win the Olympics” and I went there believing that.’

Delany remains Ireland’s only track gold medallist and his flying finish in front of 120,000 spectators inspired so many to follow the trail he blazed, including the likes of Coghlan, Treacy, O’Mara and O’Sullivan.

It was on Irish turf, the sport of National Hunt was invented with the first race from the steeples of Buttevant to Doneraile, a distance of four miles, in 1752.

So it was entirely fitting that Dawn Run, the first horse to complete the Champion Hurdle-Gold Cup double should be Irish bred, owned, trained and ridden.

The scenes at Cheltenham on a grey March afternoon in 1986 after the mare, third jumping the last under Jonjo O’Neill, found extra reserves to overhaul Forgive ’N Forget and Wayward Lad on the brutal haul to the post, were without parallel in the Cotswolds.

Pádraig Harrington was just a raw teenager then with ambitions to play for the Dubs but 11 years later he became the champion golfer at Carnoustie in the most improbable circumstances.

Starting the final round six shots behind Sergio Garcia, Harrington led by one standing on the 18th where he twice visited the Barry Burn but salvaged a double bogey with an exquisite, ice-cool pitch.

In the four-hole play-off, Harrington’s match-play mastery surfaced as he quickly went two shots up on Garcia before clinching the Claret Jug with a cagey five on the final hole and igniting an unprecedented run of nine majors in seven years for Irish golfers – he added two more himself.

Harrington is separated by Keane by three weeks in age, and is a far less flammable personality but both men will be forever joined at the hip in Irish sport’s biggest moments.