Arthur James O'Dea

I

IT WAS ALMOST 40 minutes into this interview when Danny McDaid began recounting his personal best times.

He had run the 3000 metres in 8:20, the 5000 in 13:56 and the 10,000 in 29:10. The 10-mile distance he had managed in 47:30, and 2:13.06 was his best outing in the marathon. 

Speaking over the telephone, it was unclear whether McDaid was reading these times from a career scrapbook. He is 82-years-old now and while his recollection of a remarkable life in athletics is unblemished by age, those races were nevertheless run decades ago. 

Something in how McDaid relayed these numbers suggested he would never need reminding of them, however. Indications of how fast he had proven himself to be, they are both a point of personal pride and a prompt for further questioning; could I have gone faster? 

When he ran for Ireland on the international stage, times had seemed immaterial next to the races themselves. Growing up in rural Donegal in the 1940s and ’50s, McDaid had not been granted exposure to organised athletics. When the recently formed Cranford Athletics Club sought him out in the early 1960s, he approached training runs and local races as an equal opportunity to showcase his talent – and, crucially, to win. 

By the time he left for Dublin and joined the Clonliffe Harriers AC in 1967, this 26-year-old who soon combined 90 to 140 training miles per week with a job in construction was two years shy of competing in his first international event. He was five years removed from the first of two appearances at the Olympic Games. 

And as would prove the most remarkable of all, Danny McDaid was over a decade away from playing a critical role in securing a team silver medal for Ireland at the 1979 World Cross Country Championships.

All this, and yet he wonders; could I have gone faster? 

II

Danny McDaid, a two-time Olympian and a real pioneer of athletics in Donegal, received the special honour of having the Athletic Track at the Aura Leisure Centre named after him. The former Postman from Glenswilly, who competed at the Munich (1972) and Montreal (1976) Olympic Games, cut a proud figure as a statue of himself… was unveiled before a large crowd who had gathered in the pouring rain to show their appreciation for what he has achieved. Letterkenny Town Mayor Dessie Larkin and RTÉ athletics pundit Jerry Kiernan were on hand to perform the official opening. The former described McDaid “as one of the great ambassadors that Donegal has ever produced” while Kiernan, a former club and international team-mate, hailed his impact on athletics in Ireland between the late 1960s through to the early ‘80s as outstanding. 

• Aidan O’Donnell, Donegal News, May 20, 2013

III

Athletics provided McDaid with an opportunity. 

“The background where I came from, there was nothing to achieve in that area,” he remarks bluntly. “I was never going to be known for anything else, you know.

“The fear of failure was greater than the desire to win. That would have been my driving force.”

Given his circuitous route to world class athletics, it is difficult at first to ascertain what failure might have looked like in the moment for McDaid. Retrospectively, it is easier to establish moments where his unlikely ascent was threatened. 

As he embarked on the 1972 Olympic Games, McDaid’s preparation had been disturbed before travelling to Munich. Earlier that summer the construction firm where he was working had gone out of business and he spent the weeks leading up to the games earning his living from the state – through social welfare, rather than a sporting grant one might expect today. 

“When I went to the Olympics, I was cut off because I wasn’t available for work,” he remarks now with a laugh. “That’s how Olympians were treated at that time.”

In the Donegal Democrat, Derry Journal and other newspapers with a readership open to supporting this Olympics-bound athlete from the north west of Ireland, McDaid’s coach, Larry O’Byrne, wrote letters imploring people to contribute to a fund that might allow McDaid a spell of high altitude training in the Alps (it didn’t work). 

In Munich then, he received his first sustained look at life in professional athletics. Feeling physically ready – barring the usual niggles and odd ailment – he did not believe that the Irish team had the necessary familiarity with what was mentally required to compete on such a stage, however.

One of three Irish athletes scheduled to run in the marathon, the event’s traditional spot at the end of the athletics program had given McDaid time to consider his possible shortcomings.

An amateur in the truest sense of the word, what pride he could take in achieving Olympic status was slightly compromised by the realisation that his hard work in more favourable circumstances could have elevated him to a higher level of athlete again. 

What if I hadn’t had to work training miles around time spent on a construction site? 

At 31, would Munich have been my second or third shot at the Olympic Games some proper coaching had been available at a younger age? 

If even someway decent medical assistance or nutritional advice was available on a regular basis, could my readiness for this event have been improved? 

By no means bitter then or now, McDaid nevertheless knew the answers to those questions that the Munich experience had brought about.   

Of course, better to be wondering about his preparedness for a race than dead. 

IV

On 5 September, day 10 of the competitions, came the horrific terrorist attack on Israeli athletes and coaches at the Olympic village. In the wee hours of the morning, eight heavily armed men climbed over the unguarded fence surrounding the Olympic village to gain access to the Israeli compound. The operation was carried out by “Black September,” an arm of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Fatah group. In the course of seizing and confining a group of hostages, the Palestinians killed two Israelis… On the following morning, TV coverage switched to a grim-faced Bavarian official announcing that an attempt to rescue the remaining hostages at a nearby airfield called Fürstenfeldbruck had gone terribly awry and resulted in fifteen deaths – all nine of the hostages, five of the eight terrorists, and one German policeman. 

• David Clay Large, Munich 1972: Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph at the Olympic Games

V

Located only a block or so from where the Israelis were housed in the Olympic village, Irish athletes like McDaid had an initial proximity to the violence that was nevertheless not immediately apparent. 

An attack that began while many were still asleep, one would be forgiven for assuming even the organisers had no idea what had occurred as play continued that very morning. 

“Athletes did exercises, played ping-pong, canoodled on benches, and sunned themselves on the grass – all within spitting distance of the building where fellow Olympians were being held hostage at gunpoint,” writes David Clay Large in his study of the ’72 Olympics. 

Incredibly, it was not until 3.51PM when the announcement came that the rest of the day’s events had been postponed after what had hitherto been business as usual.

Despite his relative closeness to this unfolding tragedy, McDaid, like pretty much every interested athlete in the village, had little choice but to watch along on the television. Going to bed that evening, he was clueless as anyone of the bungled rescue attempt attempted by West German officials. 

“Waking up in the morning, then, it was all different,” he remembers, initial reports the night before suggesting an amicable end to the siege. “The hostages had all been killed.”

Although only half a century has passed, it is difficult to foresee such a situation occurring now that did not result in a significant postponement of the event, at least. Instead, after a solitary day of inactivity the Olympics continued only slightly later than scheduled. 

McDaid was not alone among athletes yet to compete in welcoming this decision.  “You didn’t want to come out and say it, because it would be a selfish thing to say after such atrocities,” he explains, “but we wanted to go ahead with it.” 

In surreal circumstances, whereby a guarantee for the safety of these marathon runners competing beyond the confines of the village could not be made, McDaid became an Olympian. 

Wearing his £1.50 running shoes that more closely resembled a pair of slippers than the revolutionary footwear of the modern long-distance runner, he was the best of Ireland’s three competitors finishing 23rd in a field of over 70 athletes. 

VI

Ever growing into his 30s, McDaid’s life post-Munich simply became a measure of what he could do pre-Montreal. In April 1976, months out from the Olympic Games, he set that record time that sits with him still. 

McDaid ran a personal best time of 2:13.06 at the Irish National Marathon in Limerick. Such a run would have been good enough for a silver medal in Munich four years earlier. And, not that it was known then, would have put McDaid in the mix for a top five finish later that year. 

Upon reaching his second Olympic Games in 1976, however, McDaid found that little had changed from an Irish perspective. A postman now living back in Donegal, he acknowledges that an over-zealous approach to training hampered his effectivness, but that a badly-timed injury that didn’t receive the appropriate treatment did greater damage again.

In what many may have perceived as the unfitting nadir of his career in international athletics, he finished 42nd in a time of 2:27.07. It almost proved too much for him. 

“When I came back I would cross the street rather than meet people,” he says. “Nobody ever said a bad word to me about my performance, but people don’t understand what goes into it and how much I lost through injury. 

“There’s so much sacrifice that goes in along the way, not just from myself, but the whole family, you know. Athletes have to be so selfish.” 

Indeed, it cannot have been easy for either McDaid or his recently married wife Kathleen when he left for North America again only weeks after returning from Montreal to compete in the New York City marathon. 

Yet, in a field containing the ’72 Olympic marathon winner Frank Shorter among others, McDaid recorded an incredibly promising 8th place finish in a time of 2:17.48 which suggested that Montreal had been an aberration.  

Limerick, as it had done only months before, would again play host to a finer hour. 

VII

The 21-year-old John Treacy referred to ‘Young Danny McDaid’ with no shortage of affection. 

Sixteen years McDaid’s junior at the 1979 World Cross Country Championships, Treacy was already a world champion in this discipline having claimed gold a year earlier in Glasgow. A phenomenal athlete who would later win marathon silver at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, even he felt the burden of expectation as the ’79 championships were scheduled for Limerick, however. 

“People came to watch me win,” he tells The 42, and despite the rain an estimated crowd of anywhere between 20-30,000 supporters descended on the Greenpark Racecourse in anticipation of something special. 

From the moment that Ireland’s long distance running community had learned of Limerick’s successful bid to host the championships in 1979, there was a tremendous emphasis on securing a place in the Irish team. 

At 37, McDaid had harboured some concerns that his performance in Glasgow the year before might signify a downturn from which he might not return. 

“I went through a bad spell last year and so took six weeks off last Summer,” he told The Irish Press a month before the championships in Limerick. “Then in the months before Christmas I started doing 70 or 80 miles [a week] and I have kept to that level.

“As a result of all this I have found I have a far greater appetite for running and my performances have certainly improved drastically.” 

Although scholarship athletes like Treacy spent most of the year training in America, the Irish team captain McDaid, alongside his friend and Irish Olympian Tom O’Riordan, worked tirelessly with those closer to home in preparation for the event. 

“Everyone wanted to be on that team,” explains Treacy, highlighting in turn the kind of environment McDaid cultivated as their running captain. “I would always have considered Danny quiet, but very nice. You would listen to him because nice people get things done.”

Indeed, aware of his own satisfaction at being part of an Irish team that boasted the likes of Treacy among its ranks, McDaid can still recall the hurt those who missed out carried with them. 

“Athletes like Jerry Kiernan and Neil Cusack,” he explains, “they could have made it in any cross country team. I remember saying to Jerry afterwards, ‘Don’t worry about it, you’ll be breaking four minutes in the mile this summer.’ 

“And he said back to me, ‘No Danny, that doesn’t matter. Limerick was the place to be.’ He was very disappointed not to make it.”

It was an emotion framed by the inherent possibility of a home championship, and brutally realised by what was to unfold. 

As hoped and expected, Treacy finished the 12,000 metre race in first place. Four of the Irish team’s other runners (Gerry Deegan, Mick O’Shea, Donie Walsh and Tony Brien) placed between 40th and 50th in the field of 191 athletes. 

Twelve months earlier Danny McDaid had come home in 31st and to mirror that mark would have been satisfactory enough. Yet, in the rain and mud of Limerick’s uncompromising course, he went 20 places better. 

Danny McDaid, right, with Donie Walsh and Eamon Coughlan in 2009. Lorraine O'Sullivan / INPHO Lorraine O'Sullivan / INPHO / INPHO

“He ran the race of his life,” explains Treacy matter-of-factly, still able to recall the chants of ‘Ireland, Ireland’ that rang out as McDaid crossed the line. “None of us expected Danny to finish 11th – not by a long shot. Look at the people who finished behind him. Big names. The best distance runners in the world were in that field and he was just phenomenal.”

While Treacy’s gold proved invaluable, McDaid’s 11th place finish was essential to earning Ireland a place on the podium for a team silver medal. The quiet captain who led through his performances, he returned to Donegal that evening in anticipation of a postal route that wasn’t going to deliver itself. 

VIII

Time is of lasting interest to the long distance runner. 

While the races and possible medals that follow have an importance of their own, there’s something in the knowledge of one’s fastest time that is peculiarly personal. 

He has never been able to shake off that nagging sense of wonder.

“My coach Larry O’Byrne used to say, ‘Long distance runners are God’s unfinished work’,” he recalls. “I was given a talent, but there was still a lot to be done with it.” 

What he could do, McDaid did. A high-performance athlete running in Amsterdam, Rome or Madrid of a weekend, and delivering the post that week irrespective of how things had gone. 

“I had the talent,” he explains, “but my greatest talent of all was having the will to be able to go out there in the wind, rain or snow and continue to pound out the miles.”

Danny McDaid remembers his personal bests because they are an indication of what he was capable of achieving in imperfect conditions. And yet it is because he achieved as such that he has the right to wonder how much faster he might have travelled in more favourable circumstances.