Donegal athlete Mark English looked almost serene when winning the 800m final at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham last week. His run was marked by a control, authority and poise that comes with much experience.

There are particularly moving photographs of silver medallist Marino Bloudek of Croatia clasping English’s head and arm as English crouched on the track just after the finish to take in the sheer scale of his achievement. Well might he savour it, especially at the age of 33, and following all the ups and hard downs.

For all the modern training expertise deployed, some things do not change. When one of the great late 19th-century Irish runners, Thomas Conneff of Kildare, pondered his achievements, he said: “I have often thought that the secret of my success to a great extent lies in the fact that I punished myself more than other men”.

The memoirs of some of our notable athletes contain moments of triumph, but most are punctuated with much punishment.

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