from RTE sport website Former World 5,000m champion Eamonn Coghlan will receive the Hall of Fame Award at the annual National Athletics Awards in Association in Santry on Saturday 15 November. Coghlan, a three-time Olympian, ran his first sub-four minute mile in May 1975 with an Irish record 3:56.2 and one week later broke the European record with 3:53.3.
His dominance of the mile and 1500m indoors earned him the title ‘Chairman of the Boards’.
From 1974 to 1987 he won 52 out of 70 races over both distances, including a world record 3:52.6 at San Diego in 1979 and in 1983 the first ever sub-3:50 indoor mile.
The only masters (over 40 years of age) athlete ever to run a sub-four minute mile indoors, Coghlan has run 83 sub-four minute miles, indoors and out and his World Championship 5,000m title from Helsinki in 1983 remains Ireland’s only male world track title.
It is fitting that Coghlan has been chosen for this award in a year that marks the 25th anniversary of his famous World Championship victory in Helsinki.
‘I am very surprised and greatly honoured to have been chosen to receive the Hall of Fame Award,’ Coghlan said.