Memories of Helsinki

Helsinki, 1952

The Olympic Games of 1952 in Helsinki was the highest point in the stratospheric career of Czech athlete Emil Zátopek. As alluded to in an earlier blog (https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/03/emil-and-dana-olympian-love-affair.html), Zátopek won gold in the 5,000 metres, 10,000 metres and the marathon, a unique achievement that is unlikely to ever be matched. And in the middle of all that, his wife Dana won gold in the javelin competition. The Cold War was in its infancy and Zátopek and all athletes from Communist countries were segregated from non-Communist countries, for reasons such as potential espionage, cultural influencing and defection risk. But as I’ve been reading through Richard Askwith’s thrilling biography of Zátopek in recent days, my unconscious mind has been nudging me towards Helsinki for other reasons. And today I realized just why.

Emil Zátopek winning the 1952 Olympic marathon, his third gold medal of the games

Helsinki, 1983

Thirty one years after the Zátopek Olympics, Helsinki Olympic Stadium hosted the first Athletics World Championships in 1983, producing the most memorable race of my childhood and the first race I remember watching live on television. I was aged 9 going on 10 and in the middle of my first fling with running, as a barefoot cross-country runner with our local (since disbanded) club, St. Lua’s. 

At the time, Ireland had a number of world class middle and long distance runners. But Eamonn Coghlan was above and beyond all others. His very name was a byword for speediness, athleticism and success. Known as ‘The Chairman of the Boards’ in the United States because of his multiple indoors successes at mile and 1,500m distances hammered out on wooden tracks all over that country, Coghlan had a confidence and charisma that was very un-Irish for that time. He had based himself in the United States for the prime years of his career so he had developed an unapologetic ambition that might have been viewed in Ireland as arrogance.

And Coghlan had had his difficulties too. Due to self-confessed tactical errors, he had finished 4^th in the 1976 and 1980 Olympics, at 1,500m and 5,000m respectively. And 1983 had been an especially tough year for him personally, with his father dying suddenly while visiting him at his U.S. home. Added to that, his two key coaching influences, Jumbo Elliott and Jerry Farnan, had died within the previous year.  

1983 was a strange time, with the world still firmly in the grip of the Cold War. The vast bogeyman of the USSR loomed to the east as a constant threat to the whole world, even to neutral little Ireland. And the threat of a nuclear winter caused by all-out war between the superpowers never seemed far off.

So when Eamonn Coghlan stepped up to and demolished the USSR athlete Dmitriy Dmitriyez in the 5,000m final to win gold in Helsinki for little old Ireland, I got a sudden surging hope that maybe these Soviets weren’t as grimly unbeatable as we all feared. And not only had he won, but the tanned and handsome Coghlan, looking more like a Hollywood film star than an Irish runner, had beaten the bespectacled Bond-villain Russian with style and very un-Irish levels of confidence. Although I didn't know anything about him at the time, long since retired hero Emil Zátopek was present at the games as a special guest. 

Trawling through the internet today for videos of the race, I could only find the British televised version and the bland BBC bleating of the commentator made me realize that it was Tony O’Donoghue’s Irish commentary that had really made the race so special as a television spectacle. But eventually I found a 1 minute clip of O’Donoghue’s commentary (sound but no picture) and listening back to it made my eyes glisten a little. Here is a link to the commentary for that last minute and lap of the race:

https://www.rte.ie/archives/2013/0814/468054-eamonn-coghlan-wins-gold/

In summary, Dmitriyev surges into a 10 metre lead at the bell, looking unstoppable, with Coghlan barely hanging on in second. But then Coghlan effortlessly and even joyfully reels in the Russian over the next 250 metres, cranking up the speed as the Russian visibly wilts. On the far bend with 150 metres to go, Coghlan looks at Dmitriyev, smiles and raises his clenched fists victoriously, even though he hasn’t even as yet overtaken him. And at the last bend, with 100 metres left, he surges away and leaves Dmitriyev and everyone else for dead.

But my words here pale in comparison to the raw and passionate commentary of Tony O’Donoghue, words that in my opinion put even George Hamilton’s 1990 ‘a nation holds its breath’ football commentary into the ha’penny place. So along with the audio link above, I have transcribed O’Donoghue’s commentary below. The commentary starts off relatively calm and measured, but becomes increasingly fevered towards the end, and I have used capital letters to indicate when he is actually shouting.

Enjoy!

‘There is one lap to go and it is becoming increasingly difficult to remain cool and objective about the outcome of this race.

Dimitryev has a lead of 4 metres from Coghlan.  

Coghlan is chasing him.

Wessinghage doesn’t seem to have it, so Coghlan is chasing Dmitriyev and it looks as though the race is between these two.

Coghlan looks extremely comfortable.

Dmitriyev has done everything over the last 800 metres.

Coghlan is coming up on his shoulder.

He looks behind him.

He checks for Wessinghage, the man he fears most.

He is on the shoulder of Dmitriyev in this fine position, as Martti Vainio launches a counter assault.

But (it’s) Coghlan and Dmitriyev and the race is between the two.

Dmitriyev is holding the lead.

Coghlan is waiting. Coghlan signals. He’s going to go. He looks at him.

He is SUPREMELY confident.

Eamonn Coghlan is going to do what he has been threatening to do all his life.

He is going to WIN THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP.

And with total contempt he runs away from the entire field, and Coghlan is the WORLD CHAMPION.

A SUPERB confident run by a great athlete’.