1 December 1956: Ronnie Delaney won Gold for Ireland at the Summer Olympics in Melbourne Australia. His triumph in the Antipodes was heard in Ireland at breakfast time that Saturday morning and was a great morale boost for people back home in the midst of Winter. 

Delaney was already an accomplished runner and was one of the few people in the World to have mastered the Four Minute Mile. He trained hard to make it onto Ireland’s Olympic Team and only just made it. The race that gave him his Gold Medal was the 1500 metres held at the Melbourne Cricket Club. 

Local runner John Landy was the big favourite. Delany kept close to Landy until the final lap, when he started a crushing final sprint, winning the race in a new Olympic record. Delany thereby became the first Irishman to win an Olympic title in athletics since Bob Tisdall in 1932. The Irish people learned of its new champion at breakfast time. Delany would be Ireland's last Olympic champion for 36 years, until Michael Carruth won the gold medal in boxing at the Summer Olympics in Barcelona.

Reflecting on his win all those years ago he recalled: "I had this decisiveness. Where did it come from? Well, it came from this quantity of training I had put in, the tutoring I got, the mentoring I got and from the heart. Overall it was built in there from hard work, dedication and desire.

"Tactically, I wanted to win and I raced to win. In the Olympic final, I ran the perfect race."

http://www.rte.ie/sport/athletics/2016/1201/835885-ronnie-delany/

In 2006, Delany was granted the Freedom of the City of Dublin and was also conferred with an honorary Doctor of Laws Degree by University College Dublin in the same year.