'We did it Jack': The Killybegs man who shaped Olympic legend Ronnie Delany

One of the biggest influences on the career of iconic Irish athlete Ronnie Delany hailed from Killybegs.

Delany, who passed away this week at the age of 91, won the 1500m gold at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne.

At the age of 21 and in front of 120,000 people at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Delany won in 3:41.2, ahead of Germany’s Klaus Richtzenhain and Australia’s John Landy, the pre-race favourite.

After the race, as he basked in the glory, Delany sent a four-word telegram back to Ireland: “We did it Jack”.

When a student at the Catholic University School (CUS) on Leeson Street in Dublin, Jack Sweeney - a maths teacher - was Delany’s first athletics coach. Sweeney also coached at the Crusaders Athletic Club, who Delany represented.

A native of Killybegs, Sweeney attended Niall Mor National School in his young years before going to St Eunan’s College in Letterkenny. A talented high jumper himself, Sweeney got a job teaching at CUS and Neil Sweeey from Dungloe and Killybegs’ Bernie O’Callaghan were among those he coached in the capital.

Delany never forgot Sweeney’s influence.

"Other people would have seen my potential but he was the one who in effect helped me execute my potential,” Delany once said.

“I credit him, Lord rest his soul, with teaching me that when I was 17 years of age. Enhancing it when I was 18. My formula to win. Make one significant strike, and only one, and don’t make it too early, make it a little bit later. If you went too early, you were likely to blow up.”

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Delany, who also had a stellar running career at Villanova University and who became only the seventh man ever to run a sub-four-minute mile (3:59) just six months before the 1956 Olympics, recalled how the “shape of the race” was important in being in a position to strike.

He said: “Make the one move, to win. That was the only tactic I knew, learned from my first coach, Jack Sweeney, back in CUS in Dublin.”

Delany also won a bronze in the 1500m at the 1958 European Championships in Sweden and gold in the 800m at the 1961 World University Games.