The Man Who United Ireland

In the afternoon, after a drive past St. Patrick's Cathedral, where Jonathan Swift was dean from 1713 to 1745, Coghlan parks near the gray stone of Kilmainham Gaol. "The leaders of the Easter Week Rising were executed up there," he says. That was in 1916, though he speaks as if it happened last year. Nearby is the clubhouse of the Donore Harriers, a bare, cold room with bits of mud on its masonite floor. Coghlan hangs his suit on a nail and is soon out running across Phoenix Park, 1,760 acres of moist woods and fields surrounding Aras An Uachtar�in—the Irish White House.

"I do about 70% of my running over soft country," he says. "I think it's best not to pound your legs on the hard roads any more than you have to." In this off-season between indoors and out, he runs 90 miles a week of stamina work, alternating days of hard surges over hills with days of more gentle effort. This is an easy day, but Coghlan still constantly changes his speed, as if answering some internal spring that gets wound too tightly by an unvarying pace.

Cruising down a long row of huge trees, he says, "See the crooked trunk, fourth from the end? That's where I started my first race, when I was 11. I'd just joined the club, and the officials said I couldn't run the mile cross-country, I was too young, too new. I cried until they let me in and then I won. I can still see the shock on those faces."

A couple of miles on, Coghlan plunges down steep trails through thickets. "This is Furry Glen," he shouts. "On Sundays we'd go for cat-and-mouse chases in here with Gerry Farnan, my coach then and now. Miles and miles and loved it all." Then and now. "The idea was to enjoy our running, not to be slogging away so hard we'd be tired of competing by 17. Gerry has no use for people who slog kids."

Coghlan churns over the tops of steep green moguls, part of what he calls the "Munich Lap" because his first hard training came here, as he tried to get a qualifying time for the 1972 Olympic 1,500. He was 19 then. Coghlan missed by a tenth and then took up his Villanova education in earnest.

The line of Irish runners at Villanova began in 1948 with Jim Reardon and continued with the likes of John Joe Barry (The Ballincurrie Hare), Ron Delany, the 1956 Olympic 1,500-meter champion, Noel Carroll, Frank Murphy, Donal Walsh and John Hartnett. Now that Neil Cusack and Ed Leddy have performed well at East Tennessee State, Niall O'Shaughnessy at Arkansas and Treacy at Providence, an Irish runner of promise senses he has a choice, but Coghlan's only dream was of Villanova. "I thought it was going to be the greatest thing since sliced pan," he says. "But it wasn't easy. I was homesick at first, and Jumbo Elliott [the school's almost magically successful coach since 1935] wanted it hard, academically and athletically. The guys I met in school were a tremendous help, genuine friends, not at all like the mouthy U.S. tourists in plaid slacks from which I'd formed my stereotype of Americans. Jumbo coached the team like a 3:30-to-five business, like the heavy-equipment company that made him a millionaire, and there were no board meetings. Jumbo was the boss. We'd warm up and then learn our day's workout. It took a while to understand Jumbo even a little. He wanted to do all the thinking. It was his job to get us ready. It was our job to run. Guys who didn't understand that didn't do well. Those who did, and accepted it, and went with him, did fine."

Coghlan was a good accepter. In 1975 he ran a 3:53.3 mile behind Filbert Bayi's 3:51.0 world record in Jamaica. His natural speed and a talent for dramatic acceleration late in a race were honed with thousands of 440s on Villanova's outdoor board track and with races on the U.S. indoor circuit.

"I could never have achieved the same goals if I'd stayed in Ireland," he says. "I was pretty raw when I arrived. I still smoked until I got the scholarship. And suddenly I was thrown in with guys like Ken Schappert, Hartnett and Marty Liquori. It was hard even to train the way they did. But inside there was a flicker of certainty. I had won in the Irish juniors. In a couple of years I won in college and then in the NCAA championships. Then, on the next plateau, international competition. The point is I wouldn't have gotten there had I not been exposed to those various levels. Each plateau took a new adjustment and gave new confidence. Now I can run with anyone in the world, even though the sensations of racing are exactly the same as they were when I was 14."

Deep in the park, Coghlan surges up a wooded slope, scattering a herd of deer. "It's great here today," he says. "But you can hate it sometimes. I always cringe inside when people say running comes naturally to me, that training is nothing but an uplifting joy. That's not why I race well. I'm competitive. I always have been—not necessarily to be first, but to do the best I can...." He runs slowly across a half mile of soccer and hurling fields that were Dublin's 18th-century dueling grounds. "It's something in me, deep down, that makes me different in a race."

The difference lies in Coghlan's kick, the late move so explosive it cannot be countered. It is an act requiring a calm husbanding of reserves during the race, then a sudden, blazing release. Coghlan perfectly balances these extremes. He is the potent sprinter waiting within the patient distance runner. There are men who can carry a kick longer than Coghlan—England's Steve Ovett is the best just now—but none who detonate as he does. He won the 1976 NCAA 1,500 from UTEP's Wilson Waigwa and Oregon's Matt Centrowitz by not beginning to sprint until the last 50 meters. In his semifinal at the Montreal Olympics he came out of the pack off the last turn and, within 20 meters, moved out to a five-meter lead, coasting in with a happy smile.