The Man Who United Ireland

None of this was planned, at least not by Coghlan. He says, "Lucky breaks, I've gotten them. Things like the world record, the European Indoor gold medal, those once were dreams, but if I dream anything, it seems to work out." Such a faith is calming, at the very least. "In the dark days of winter, when my hemoglobin was low and training was an ordeal, I didn't really worry. If I were to worry, I think perhaps things wouldn't fit into place. I let the goals come to me."

This is not to suggest that Coghlan has been exactly passive about ordering his life around his discipline. "Mates at work say on days when it's splashing out, 'Come on, have a few beers with us,' and I say I can't and they say, 'Just this once,' but I know that once turns into twice and then a dozen, so I can't, and they don't understand that." His tone is flat, without illusion. "When I came back from Villanova in 1976 the comparison of American and Irish life was forced on me. It seemed in the U.S. that people wanted to do the best they could, they wanted to achieve without cutting corners, whether in sport or business. Here there is a tendency to want the most you can get for the least work." He cites the post-office and dock-workers strikes of this spring. "Sometimes it seems people are looking to strike not for legitimate reasons of fairness, but out of jealousy of other workers or greed. The crane operators say they won't go back without a raise of �50 a week."

Outside, walking, Coghlan is hailed by an elderly priest with crooked teeth. He says he is from the nearby Clarendon Street Church and has a Mrs. Coghlan in the flock.

"Near 90 and independent?" says Coghlan. "Practically lives in the church? That's my grandmother."

"Is she now?" the priest says."How fine for her to have such a grandson." This seems too syrupy to the cleric, apparently, for he concludes with, "Ah, you're trying, anyway. That's the thing. You're trying."

Coghlan watches him retreat and says with satisfaction, "This, this is Dublin."

He stops in at the City Hall to pick up some engraved invitations to a reception the following week, at which he is to be honored for his recent achievements. He receives the gilt-edged cards from Noel Carroll, the Dublin public-relations officer, who looks leaner than when he ran a 1:47.5 880 for Villanova in the early '60s. A decade and a half later, Carroll was still the Irish national 800-meter champion and had just returned from a noon hour devoted to hard 220s at a nearby track. He shows Coghlan and a visitor around the great dome of the hall, pointing at the city motto in mosaic on the stone floor: OBEDIENTIA CIVIUM URBIS FELICITAS.

"Which means if you toe the line, you'll be O.K.," says Carroll, a man of easy informality. But informality is carried to a fault in the Dublin City Hall, as one learns when Carroll ducks through a little door beneath the stairs and emerges with a frayed brown paper envelope, from which he slips the first charter of Dublin, brown ink on leather, signed by Henry II in 1172, two years after the Normans overpowered the Danes. Coghlan plays with the charter's green braided thong while Carroll unfolds a great folio of vellum—a later charter illuminated with gold leaf and a painting of Queen Elizabeth.

"The first, I guess," says Carroll. Soon he is struggling to lift the city's sword and huge, 300-year-old silver and gold mace. "Great symbolism here," he says pointing out the chased Irish harp, the English rose and the Scottish thistle. "In any other city in the world these would be on display," he says. "And we do bring them out on one or two occasions, quietly, but it takes a while for people to think of them as other than hateful symbols of the monarchy, the foreign rule we fought to get rid of. The emotion still lingers." This seems to confirm Coghlan's belief that history is different for the Irish, never seeming to fade. But then the English still gently fan the embers, as in a report Carroll saw filed by an English reporter from the World Cross-Country Championship in Limerick (where Ireland's John Treacy scored a masterful victory and Coghlan ploughed home 70th). " England won the team championship," says Carroll, easily quoting the article from memory, "but Ireland had the consolation of supplying the first individual to finish."

It is with more reverence that Carroll opens a green leather book containing the signatures of those on whom the Freedom of the City has been conferred, modern Dublin's highest honor. There are 52 names, on numbered lines. Ulysses S. Grant is there, and Charles Parnell, and George Bernard Shaw, and John F. Kennedy. Coghlan's expression, examining this roster, is one of soft pride. "Lots of cardinals in between the great names," he says. "No runners, though." He seems to be cheered by this reminder that sporting conquests do fade, that athletes seldom by their art win men out of bondage.