This weekend marks the 127th running of the Penn Relay Carnival, the oldest and largest track and field meeting in the world, which since 1895 has also been showcasing some of the world’s best athletes.
Sonia O’Sullivan is now honoured among them, her name to be etched on to the Penn Relays Wall of Fame inside the Franklin Field stadium in Philadelphia, incidentally the oldest football stadium still operating in America.
O’Sullivan will be in good Irish company too, names like Ronnie Delany, Eamonn Coghlan and John Treacy already on the Wall of Fame, which was first drawn up in 1994 to mark the 100th running of the three-day event, traditionally staged on the last weekend in April and attracting some 15,000 athletes across all levels of the sport.
The Wall of Fame inductees are honoured solely for their accomplishments at the Penn Relays, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania with other achievements above or beyond not considered. O’Sullivan is in good company there too, previous individual inductees including Olympic or world record holders such Carl Lewis and Bob Beamon, both then competing as high school athletes from New Jersey.
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This year there are six new inductees, three individuals and three relay teams. O’Sullivan is joined by sprinter Yohan Blake, the world’s second fastest man behind Usain Bolt, who first made his mark at Penn Relays in 2007, as a high school athlete from St Jago in Jamaica. American high jumper Tanya Hughes, still the Penn Relays record holder after 33 years, is the other individual inductee.
Each Wall of Fame name is selected by a panel of Penn Relays historians: during her four years at Villanova University, just outside Philadelphia, O’Sullivan, who graduated in 1994, won six gold Penn Relays watches in all, the coveted prize on offer.
These included two each in the 4x800m, the 4x1,500m and the distance medley. The pair of 4x1,500m wins in 1989 and 1990 saw her run the fastest split among her team-mates, with the winning times setting world all-time bests on both occasions, the latter lasting as a world best for 17 years.
O’Sullivan’s lead-off on the winning distance medley in 1990 sparked the win as Villanova missed their own record by less than one second. The time remained the fastest in the world for 18 years. Incidentally too, this year O’Sullivan’s daughter Sophie will compete in two relay events with her college, the University of Washington, in Seattle.
Delany and Coghlan, also of Villanova, are both inductees from the first Wall of Fame in 1994. Delany, who graduated in 1958, never lost a race at Penn Relays and was a part of five Carnival records, for three successive years anchoring both winning medley relays and running the third leg on victorious mile relays.
Coghlan, who graduated in 1976, also went unbeaten, winning nine watches and setting three Carnival records. Four of his watches came in the 4-Mile/4x1,500m relay making him one of the few runners to run on four winning teams in the same event.
Treacy, who ran for Providence College in Rhode Island, graduating in 1978, made his Penn Relays debut by winning the combined College and Olympic Development 10,000m race, setting a 27:55.2 record on a rainy Thursday night in 1978.
Two other Irish names already on the Wall of Fame are John Hartnett, the Cork runner who graduated from Villanova in 1974, the Outstanding College Athlete of the 1973 Relays, and the late Frank Murphy from Dublin, also running for Villanova, graduating in 1969, the year after he helped Villanova became the first college ever to win five relay championships.
Another notable Irish name on the Wall of Fame is the St Malachy’s team from Belfast, who from 1997 through 2000 won four straight high school boys distance medleys, Conor Sweeney on all four teams, one of only two schools to ever accomplish that feat. Attendance at Penn Relays over the three days typically tops 100,000, over 50,000 for Saturday’s finals, which also go out live on NBC.
