A tribute to the late Colm Murray

Colm Murray was honoured by a People of the Year award in September 2012 in recognition of his efforts to further medical research into motor neurone disease, writes Dan Buckley

Colm Murray had been in RTÉ since Gay Byrne was a boyo, weaned as a continuity announcer before being elevated to the newsroom and, finally, emigrating to sports journalism.

He joined the national broadcaster in Oct 1978 and a decade later, moved into sports broadcasting as a sports presenter and a founding member of the sports news unit on the Six One News.

In the course of his sports broadcasting career, he covered numerous national and international events, including the Cheltenham Festival since 1990, and the Olympics and Paralympics in Sydney, Athens, and Beijing.

In 2000, he was presented with the ESB Media Award as Sports Broadcaster of the Year for his coverage of the Irish team and their participation in the Sydney Paralympics.

However, he regarded the highlight of his career as covering Jack Charlton’s Republic of Ireland soccer campaign in the 1990 World Cup in Italy.

Colm also pioneered coverage of the Paralympics and Special Olympics when assigned to both by RTÉ. His warmth and ability to put athletes at ease saw him embraced by successive Irish paralympic teams as an ambassador each Olympiad.

Racing was his passion and, like many an ‘RTÉ personality’ before him, he became a lunchtime legend — the voice of the punter, the anything-but-po-faced face of racing that punters could relate to, even if they didn’t know one end of a nag from another.

Cheltenham was Colm’s big annual event and he enjoyed it and commented upon it with gusto.

Then disaster struck.

He last covered the Cheltenham festival in the middle of March 2010, just two weeks before he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND).

He continued to work in the RTÉ newsroom after being diagnosed and embarked on a series of in-depth radio profiles of sporting luminaries such as Alex Ferguson, Brian O’Driscoll, and Johnny Murtagh.

But, finally, the disease began to take its toll and he was finally forced to abandon the job he loved. In Dec 2010, Colm appeared on the Late Late Show and spoke of the shock he felt at being diagnosed with the debilitating condition.

“I have bad days, but I try to maintain a healthy interest in the world around me and especially in the next winner,” he wrote in an article for the Irish Times health section.

Acknowledging the support he received from friends and colleagues in the RTÉ sports news unit, he described his topsy-turvy life with the disease, and his determination to keep on doing as much as he could. “You have to refocus, readjust, and re-centre or else you might as well go out and lie under the 46A,” he wrote, before declaring: “My banker for Royal Ascot is Fame And Glory at 3-1. Looking forward to things like that keeps me going.

“All those things are important in life. The anticipation and the thrill of involvement are all healthy things which keeps one’s mind focused on other things.

“This is the reality for me. I have to be honest about it. There is no point in me dressing it up to be something that it is not.

Around that time, Colm was asked by Orla Hardiman of Beaumont Hospital in Dublin if he would take part in the trial of Dexpramipexole, an experimental drug designed to combat the disease. He agreed, well aware that the drug — even if successful — was unlikely to affect his prognosis.

“I know little enough about it from a medical point of view,” he wrote. “My understanding of it is that it is a drug that the top medical experts hold high hopes for and Prof Hardiman fought hard for these trials to be staged here in Ireland.

“I have to hope that it will mark a major step forward in the battle against the progression of this terrible disease. I can’t say that it is some miracle wonder drug that is going to be a cure for motor neurone, but it gives me something to hope for. At the very least, it’s a faint glimmer of light at the end of a very dark tunnel. That’s why I had no hesitation in going for it.”

His moral courage was also evident in his decision to take part in an RTÉ documentary to highlight MND and assist in developing treatment for those diagnosed.

Such was the impact of the programme that Colm was honoured by a People of the Year award in September 2012 in recognition of his efforts to further medical research into the debilitating disease.

In the revealing documentary, he said he focused on three words when he was diagnosed: Progressive, incurable, and terminal. The documentary attracted 600,000 viewers.

At the time he said he was “overwhelmed” by people contacting him after the programme, in which he vowed not to let the disease ruin his life.

That determination was further tested two months ago when his sister, Cathy, 56, died suddenly of a heart attack.

Cathy, who left two children, worked as a broadcast co-ordinator with RTÉ’s radio news programme Morning Ireland. She began working with the station in 1979, a year after Colm started there. Their younger sister, Patricia, died in 1969 from a tumour when she was just six.

Prof Hardiman yesterday praised Murray for his courage and steadfastness. “Colm could easily have laid down to the disease and become a victim but he instead became a champion,” she said.

Colm Murray, aged 61, died at his home in Dublin yesterday. He is survived by his wife, Anne, daughters Kate and Patricia and his sister, Mary.

Cruel illness

Motor neurone is an illness that strikes without warning and can kill within months. It is one of the more devastating conditions, and also one of the more mysterious: Though 5% of cases are hereditary, 95% strike without any known reason.

It is also incredibly cruel. It is an irreversible condition that destroys the nerves that power the muscles, taking away the ability to talk, to walk, to eat and breathe, and its progress tends to be both rapid and merciless.

The condition is currently incurable, and causes gradually increasing disability, while leaving the mind undamaged.

Sufferers — while perfectly conscious — are trapped in their bodies, unable to speak or move.

Half those affected die within 14 months of the diagnosis, the other half within two to five years. The British scientist Stephen Hawking is not only the most famous sufferer of the disease, but also its longest survivor.

Researchers have long thought MND, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease after the US baseball player (inset) who died of it, is caused by viral infection.