Derek Graham: New Belfast Parkrun honours NI great's historic sub four-minute mile

Northern Ireland athletics great Derek Graham launched Belfast's latest parkrun on Saturday at the Paisley Park venue where he produced one of his most memorable performances in 1967.

Graham, now 83, finished second behind legendary Kenyan Kip Keino 47 years ago as both became the first athletes to run the sub four-minute mile in Northern Ireland.

A plaque jointly commemorating the piece of athletics history and inaugural Paisley Park Parkrun was unveiled just before Graham fired the starting pistol for Saturday's 5km event at the West Circular Road facility where the 300 odd runners included Belfast Lord Mayor Micky Murray.

"It's been so long since I've been here that on the way up this morning I took a wrong turn and spent 20 minutes trying to find my way back," laughed Graham at Saturday's morning ceremony.

Belfast North MLA Brian Kingston, himself a hugely enthusiastic runner, and the former athlete's long-time friend Colin Beattie were among the driving forces in marrying the new parkrun along with recognition of Graham's achievement from 47 years ago.

The Paisley Park facility originally was the sports grounds of the nearby Mackies factory and regularly hosted the Northern Ireland Athletics Championships and other international meetings prior to the arrival of the Mary Peters Track in the mid 1970s.

One of Graham's running contemporaries Norman Windrum, from the then Duncairn Harriers, joked as they shook hands that he was rarely as close to the Northern Ireland athletics legend during their races.

Asked for his memories of his famous race which took place on 16 August 1967, Graham recalled working in his insurance day job until 5pm before heading to the west Belfast venue to take on the Kenyan great who won the Olympic 1500m title in Mexico City a year later.

"It was a normal working day for me and then the race was on at 7.30pm," Graham told BBC Sport Northern Ireland.

"But that wasn't unusual in those days. When I headed down to Dublin to run at Santry on Saturdays, I would be working until noon and then you would have to rush down with the races usually starting around 2.30pm.

"If somebody else was driving, I would be changing en route as we neared Dublin and you would eat your lunch in the car on the way down."

Getting back to the Paisley Park race, the Belfast man, who famously won a silver medal for Ireland at the 1966 International Cross Country Championships later renamed the World Cross Country Championships, recalled a "very wet evening which meant the cinder track was very mucky and churned up".

Always his own harshest critic, Graham said he regarded the Belfast race as a "failure because I finished second" although Keino's dominant Olympic 1500m win in Mexico a year later put the Northern Ireland man's performance in context.

The Kenyan took victory at Paisley Park in a time of three minutes 57.2 seconds as he finished 2.2 seconds clear of Graham in what was one of the Belfast runner's three sub-four career performances.

Graham had won his International Cross Country Championships silver medal 17 months earlier in Morocco when those behind him included legendary French runner Michel Jazy, with only local man Ben Assou El Ghazi finishing ahead of the Ireland team member.

But within a year, Graham's days of representing an Ireland team at the International Cross Country event were over as the factionalism that bedevilled Irish athletics for decades reared its head to prevent competitors from Northern Ireland clubs even competing south of the Irish border.

Graham had represented Great Britain in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo but prior to 1967 had still been eligible to proudly pull on the Irish vest at the International Cross Country Championships and other non-championship events.

Being prevented from competing at the Santry track that he loved was a particularly savage blow to Graham's morale from which he says he never fully recovered from.

Graham also suffered the pain of having his series of Irish records airbrushed from sporting history but following a BBC Sport NI in 2020, Irish governing body Athletics Ireland restored seven of his marks to its national records timelines.

He still went on to produce a number of remarkable performances which included beating US great Gerry Lindgren and legendary Belgian Gaston Roelants over 5,000m at the famous Weltklasse meeting in Zurich in 1967 and setting a world record for the half marathon of 63 minutes and 53 seconds in 1970 which stood for a remarkable six years.

And the Graham sporting genes are clearly still strong as word came through on Saturday morning when proud family members joined Derek at the Paisley Park ceremony that his grandson Joshua had won a bronze medal in the Commonwealth Powerlifting Championships in South Africa.