Article August Week 2 2005
John Lenihan An Irish Sporting Legend
As the county holds it’s breath in anticipation of the big clash in Croke Park on the 28th of this month between Kerry and Cork it appears as if all else sporting wise in this county is put on the backburner. That is the tradition of Kerry, football first and all else second. Nevertheless one can become very blind as to what other great sporting heroes we have in this Kingdom of sport. So recently as the fellow said just to test the waters I put the following question to five sporting friends of mine, “what two Kerry athletes from the same parish are traveling to New Zealand next month to represent Ireland in the world championship”. Two came up with one name while the other three hadn’t a clue.
Kerry’s hill running legend the great John Lenihan will be joined by his Ballymacelligott team mate Own McKenna next month as they set out to compete in the World Hill running championship in far away New Zealand. Last week both men joined me in the Terrace Talk studios to talk about their life and times and for me to have Lenihan on the programme was as exciting as any of his three previous guest appearance. So now as he preparers to set out on another great adventure it give me the opportunity to look at what is the astonishing sporting life of a man who must be rated as one of the top ten of Kerry’s greatest ever sporting sons.
Twenty nine years ago on August 15th 1976 John Lenihan made his first appearance on an athletic track in Kerry. It was Pattern day in Knocknagoshel, there he competed in the 400meter at under 16 and his debut was far from spectacular, he finished 6th in a field of seven and as he told me, “ rather than been disappointed I was very happy to have beaten at least on person”. One of Kerry’s greatest sportsmen had launched a career which would literally carry him to the top of the world in his chosen sport. “I never suspected for one moment that I would have such a long and successful career”.
His next stepping stone was on the 19th June the following year when he finished second in the Ballymacelligott community games marathon, however two months later the foundation stone for his future success was well and truly laid when after finishing 7th in a 3.5 senior mile race in Castleisland from a field of twenty four he joined the Cordal Athletic club which would later become the now famous Rioch Athletic club.
This began his passion for serious heavy training, he would head out on the roads near his home dressed in jeans and a jumper and would jog away until he would hear a car coming and when he did he would slow down to a walk. “At that time to see someone out running on the roads would invite some strange comments, many evenings at dusk I would sneak into a neighbors field to do some cross country training in a pair of newly purchased spikes and the neighbor was heard to wonder what kind of a strange animal was roaming the fields during darkness leaving all those strange spike marks in his fields”.
By now his fitness levels were improving rapidly, and in the winter of 1977 he ran lots of cross country in Kerry and around Munster. Success began to come to the Ballymac hero, Pat griffin a great athletics man from Ardfert, (where Tokyo Olympian Tom O Riordan came from) entered Johns life and ’78 saw him chalk up three wins, five seconds and six thirds. His great talent was quickly recognized as he helped Kerry and Rioch to a host of medal positions. 1978 saw him chosen for the first of his many International appearances and he wore the green vest of his country in Fermoy in the cross country Internationals. “It was the proudest moment of my life so far and my selection for Ireland spurred me on to train even harder”.
In 1980 he recorded thirteen wins and eight runner up positions as he got stronger and stronger and the winning of the Munster Intermediate Cross country title despite being out for a long time following a nasty spiking injury was another major achievement in his blossoming career. He was now the talk of the cross country scene, a discipline that requires great fitness, strength, courage and agility. “In 1981 I felt my career was really taking off and I was selected to run for Ireland at senior level and was thrilled to be on the same team as John Treacy as we ran in Gateshead in England and this was followed with selection again for the prestigious Crystal Place international”.
Lenihan was now one of Irelands top athletes and in 1982 he won his first Kerry Senior cross country title, a championship that he was to win for an unbelievable eleven years in a row and that same year he recorded eighteen wins as he traveled to race meetings all over the country and he also registered as many runner up positions. In September of that year he was off to Prague where he represented Ireland in road and track races. His training regime is the stuff of legend; He would often train twice a day logging up to 150 miles and more, forcing his light muscular perfectly honed body to travel beyond the pain barrier. And the wins were now coming on a weekly basis, “I was getting super results, I improved my times for my track events and I brought my half marathon time down to sixty three minutes and. In “85 I won the Isle of Mann Athletics competition which is a grueling three day event, that same year I moved to California for winter training after turning down an offer the previous year to compete as a professional athlete on then road running circuit in America with my sponsors Adias.
“However 1985 was a very significant year in my career, the seeds for my mountain running were well and truly sown when I won the Peel hill race in the Isle of Mann and the Warriors mountain race in Sligo. I took to this sport like a duck to water.” He was to go on in spectacular fashion and literally beat the world at his new event. In ’86 he was picked for Ireland for the first time as a hill runner and at the Snowdon International he finished 2nd in a field of five hundred runners, he won the Irish half Marathon, then went to Italy to compete and finished second to the reigning world champion in an international race, he was getting better and better, he training runs became longer and tougher. 1985 was the first time he competed in the world mountain racing championships where he finished 5th. He would go on and represent his country in this event for something like an incredible fourteen years. One of the most astonishing things about the great John Lenihan, ( and the word great was never more appropriately used about a Kerry or Irish athlete than in this instance) is the length of his career, he is still running and winning at the top level despite age, injuries and working on his farm.
Indeed people speak in awe of his achievements, one great story regularly told is of the Iron Man rising at five o clock in the morning, milking his cows and then heading off to some far flung race in Ulster or Connacht, winning as usual and returning late at night to his mountain home in Glounageenty, between the Stacks and Glenaruddery Mountains. This is the country and the very glen, wild and inaccessible where the Earl of Desmond holed up and eluded his mortal enemies for months in long forgotten days. The following morning the long training runs, the farm work and life went on.
“From 1986 on I won most events that I competed in, often running over twenty races unbeaten. In’88 I won the Carrauntohill mountain race, an event I was to win fourteen years in a row, ( this will never be equaled), and then in 1989 I won the Snowdon International mountain race in Wales. 1990 saw me selected on the Irish team for the world cross country in France and I also won the Irish half marathon in Wexford. I collapsed at that year’s world mountain racing championship in Austria and I swore never again to compete in the World’s”. However twelve months later1991 in Switzerland John Lenihan wrote himself into the pages of Irish sporting history when he stunned the massive field of top class runners to become World Hill running champion.
Now in the autumn of a magnificent career the story of Kerry’s John Lenihan would take thousands of written words to capture in full. We wish him and his Kerry friend and team mate Own McKenna bon voyage and the best of luck as they set of on another adventure to New Zeeland. There can be no arguing arguements John Lenihan is a living sporting legend.
Weeshie's Week 
