This picture above must pull at the heartstrings of any athletics fan. A running track in the early stages of demolition. The powers that be have decided to finally remove the great track from the map. UCD was once the powerhouse of college athletics in Ireland but sadly the death of Noel Carroll led to the beginning of the end. Its been a gradual deterioration over the year and despite a Joe Sweeney inspired win in the road relays a few weeks back there has been little to shout about for UCD athletics in recent years. Having said there was a certain Olympian called Derval O' Rourke as a UCD student athlete in the post-Carroll era but now days all the top athletes who stay at home and base themselves in Dublin avail of the DCU scholarship programme (imagine how the trackless DCU would have treated the moss covered 8 lanes if they had their hands on it).
Anyway, it got me thinking. The story below in the Irishrunningmatters blog had a story of how the Cork Athletics Board are looking to buy a field for €350,000 to use for, wait for it, cross-country races. Yes, a field that for 99% of the year will probably lie idle. Now if that is not stupid Celtic tiger style waste of resources I don't know what it. In athletics terms there are many better ways to spend that kind of money. Refurbishing a track for example. Maybe Cork Athletics could 'loan' that €350,000 to UCD so that when the next great Cork athlete uproots and comes to Dublin to be educated and continue their sport, they'll at least have a track to train on. As an Irish Hurdler I am biased, but I'd pay €350,000 for another Derval O' Rourke instead of a cow field. Its a mad old world.
http://irishrunningmatters.blogspot.com/2011/09/cork-aai-to-spend-upwards-of-350000-in.html
7 comments:
many runners can make use of a cross country field/track 12 months of the year. Far better for runners of all standards to go for a trainning run on a grass surface than hit the roads. track athletes can get a lot of core work done,distance athletes can also make use of it for various sessions, so not a waste of time or money.
Yes I agree with the sentiments about the "Field" but this is about rural athletics in bygone times...still alive, still in control!!!
Well it is truly mind boggling , and i bet they wont even own the field outright, the farmer will get to use it for his cows for most of the year. Supporting the track at UCD instead would mean that young athletes can use it all year round. Who knows it could save a few of them from depression or following a different track in life and particularly in these times of depression and poverty.I suggest that Cork County Board get with the times for once and for all. About time they did and give some young ones a chance !!
Noel died in 1998 and Matthews and Nolan and others continued at UCD for 3-5 years at least after:- Nolan didn't medal until Noel died. One issue that Noel couldn't have fought but may have delayed was funding faded as the UCD Sports development trust expected a bigger return than what they got on foot of the 'glory days' in the 90s
I'm presuming this is a tongue in cheek suggestion aimed at highlighting the madness of Cork's potential actions versus the plight of athletics in Belfield.
I'll declare my interest here. I started training at Belfield in 1992/3 when a fresher there. I had never run or raced on a track before. I did my first track session there, my first track race there and raced countless other events and ran a dizzying number of laps over the next decade. Athletically I owe an awful lot to that track. I would never had got involved to the same degree if I had to trek to Irishtown or Santry to do a session while based in UCD. Its sad its gone, its sad its been mismanaged and allowed to fester with no replacement built. The truth was though it operated like no other track. Actually operate is a misleading term. There was no management of that track per se. It just existed. Clubs and individuals used it on an open access ad hoc basis. While some notional booking system must have existed I'm unaware of anyone who actually used it. Apart from the period when it was chained we just turned up and ran. When I left college and ran for Crusaders we ran there two or three times a week. We just turned up and ran. I'm sure DSD AC did the same. I've turned up pissed out of the students union and ran, half naked, in the pitch dark. Hundreds if not thousands of people used it on an annual basis in the same way, less the semi naked runs. Ive stumbled upn a guy wanking there and been asked by sommeone else if he could 'sketch me'. It drew some strange people on long summer evenings.
The net result of that is that you had a track that was used a community resource but in a college that would rather not have had the community at large there. UCD never felt any repsonsiblity to the community, its hard to argue why they should have. If it wasn't for the aflluence in the area around it then it would have been destroyed through vandalism years ago. This openess led to several public liability claims over the years. It's a wonder it lasted this long. The writing was been on the wall for so long about this that John O'Connor started a decade ago on a personal project of getting Irishtown up and running. John wanted to have a club venue free of the hassle associated with UCD. Irishtown was built 100% out of public money so in many ways it seems a little silly to ask the government for money at such a time when they have already invested in community athletics in south Dublin.
The whole thing has brought about a lot of nostalgia which I have enjoyed but the golden era of this track has long gone. In some ways it was never the same after Coughlan's masters sub 4 attempt. That was the last big summer crowd there I think. I ran the next night at a Dublin meet and it was as if something has passed away. It was flat. I have a huge amount of memories from Belfied, have made many friends there and enjoyed reminiscing with them over the last few days. Its been nice to make contact with the current students and I hope they get their track in the near future but it wont be the same. Belfield belonged to a bygone age. No one would allow hundreds of people to gather on the banks now, thats if you could get them to come at all. No other track I've ever been to lacked a controlled entry or an entrance fee or would let you laze around all day in the sun. No one looked over your shoulder hardly there. It was a little athletic commune in many ways. Any new facility in Belfield would belong to the new world of risk assessment, insurance, membership fees and strict opening hours. An era has passed. Perhaps the best way forward is for UCD to avail of Irishtown and for the students who have found their voice to negotiate a good deal at Irishtown.
Good point regarding Noel Carrol's death and the timing of success of Matthews and Nolan. I suppose the sentiment could be that these guys were very much the legacy of Noel Carroll and once they were gone the glory days were gone.
Ya, Noel breathed life in to the place. But no reason someone else couldnt add similar value and do great things with the right approach. Noels alliance with the then Director of Sprort Tony O'Neill was a fantasic relationship and they relied heavily on each other. Thats what worked - Colaboration of like minded people for a common goal. This can be replicated. Judging by response of many athletes re this saga, I'm confident there are people out there capable of injecting similar passion in to the sport and make things happen
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