Close your eyes and it's still real. This race footage we have all seen, this black and white film, to the athlete it's still sweat and footfalls and breathing. 1956. A lot of water under the bridge.

But not if you're him. Ronnie Delany says the joy is in the telling, and when he recounts that race, that day, he draws you in.

Close your eyes and you're right there again, watching John Landy in the front group, following his strides, poised. What you remember most acutely is knowing when to go, acknowledging the moment. "I am going to race now," you say.

And it's that simple and controlled, you just surge forward, past Landy and beyond, brushing Richtzenhain's shoulder and on towards the brilliant clear and then those seconds when the tape is shimmering in front of you and you have reached that perfect verge.

And maybe it's that precise feeling, that instant when you are untouchable and on the threshold that chills you after the elation of the podium and the medal retreats a little.

These days, Ronnie Delany is a family man, a business man, effortlessly polite. He speaks as though he has all the time in the world.

"I don't wake up every morning and think, God, I've won an Olympic medal," he admits. But equally, he will allow that it was the defining moment of his life.

"It is a quite extraordinary feeling, I suppose, something you do carry with you. Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a meeting of world Olympians in Lausanne, and to be standing among so many marvellous athletes . . . and you just know what each person is feeling with just a look."

They occasionally meet up, the cast from that December day in Melbourne when the Irish kid took gold in the 1,500 metres. Those times were less complicated. The Irish team cheered their lungs out for Ronnie and then scampered across to shout for Fred Tiedt, who boxed his way to a welterweight silver. Delany was escorted to talk to the world's press and then he sent a telegram home to his parents. "God bless you," it read. Afterwards, the athletes shook hands and vowed to keep in touch. And over the decades, most of them have.

Last September, he sat down with Brian Hewson for dinner in Dublin. During the summer, he went to Sydney and talked long into the night with John Landy. He says it's sometimes funny to see them as they are now: greying, slowing. But that race still matters to them all.

Simple things warm him yet.

"Obviously the world of track and field has changed immeasurably since then," he says. "But despite everything, I do believe that the Olympic spirit is alive, that there is an underlying idealism that has survived and that even though the context of sport in general has changed, the Olympics has a hold on people.

"The Dream Team in Barcelona was a perfect example of this. Here was a team of great players, each multi-millionaires, but they all wanted to be there, to be part of the Olympic circle. That much has been preserved."

He crossed the line in a time of 3:41.2, and remembers that even with the elation came an assumption of responsibility, a consciousness of being an Olympic champion. He knows that had his time arrived later his race would have had an immense impact on his lifestyle, that it would have been worth hard cash. In December 1956, it was solely honour.

"I have no regrets in that respect," he says. "That was my time. Training and competing in athletics as I did gave me a single-mindedness which I think was of immense value when it came to trying to make a success of my business life, when it was time to think of myself as someone other than Ronnie Delany the athlete."

Four children and, subsequently, eight grandchildren has put distance between the Ronnie Delany we know now and the lean 21-year-old from that famous, flickering black and white reel of film, where he is stretching away from the field on the bend. Easy to forget, though, watching those fondly remembered images, that Melbourne that day was loud and sultry and seething with colour and 110,000 people stood when Ronnie Delany burst the race open with that late surge, and that when the news fell around Ireland in 1956 it all seemed little short of miraculous.