The one thing David Gillick won’t mind me admitting is my mostly ruthless speed-reading of the first half of his new book The Race. Especially when just back from a run and also busy in the kitchen cooking.
Because this is no reflection whatsoever on its content or startling honesty. Some of the early passages did stop me in my tracks. Not out of any surprise or wonder, but rather the sudden realisation it has been a long time now since those emotional days and nights in Madrid, Birmingham, Berlin and Barcelona.
Gillick starts The Race in the call room before the final of the 400 metres at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. A few weeks before, he’d lowered the Irish record for the third time, running 44.77 seconds – the first Irishman to break the 45-second barrier and with that entering the realm of truly world-class athletics.
Here, inside the old Olympic Stadium still haunted by the ghost of Adolf Hitler, he has the
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