Nick Griggs: Ronnie Delany's legacy is paving the way for us all
NICK GRIGGS' ON FIRE: Nick Griggs celebrates winning the Men’s 3000m Final at the Athletics Ireland National Indoor Championships. Pic: ©INPHO/Morgan Treacy
Back in the summer of 2023, Nick Griggs stood on the line in Budapest at his first World Championships alongside Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen. He was just 18 at the time and looked around with starry-eyed disbelief, readily admitting now that he felt some impostor syndrome.
But ahead of this evening’s world indoor 3000m final in Torun, Poland, that feeling is long gone for the 21-year-old Tyrone athlete.
“Two, three years ago, whenever I was just happy to be there, I'm looking at those guys and racing them being like, ‘This is class just to be in here,’” he says. “I wasn’t expecting to beat them because I didn’t think I was good enough and right enough, I wasn’t.
“But now I don’t see why I can’t rub shoulders with them. It’s going to be interesting to go out there and really put myself in the mix, make a statement, and see if I am as good as I think I am at the minute, as good as I think I can be.”
Griggs is “stronger, faster, better, fitter” than he was then and he proved it at the recent indoor nationals in Abbotstown, unleashing a wicked turn of pace on the final lap, with rivals Andrew Coscoran and Darragh McElhinney clashing on the last turn and Griggs swinging wide before sprinting clear to take gold.
What would satisfy him in his first global final?
“I am dreaming of a medal,” he admits. “I'm not saying I'm going to medal, but if it did all go perfectly for me and I had a career race, why could I not medal?”
The field is stacked, bringing together the full men’s 1500m podium from the 2024 Olympics – USA’s Cole Hocker, Britain’s Josh Kerr and USA’s Yared Nuguse – along with the reigning world champion in the 3000m steeplechase, Geordie Beamish of New Zealand. Mention that to Griggs and he takes a moment to reconsider his stated goal.
“That medal shout was maybe a little bit delusional,” he laughs. “But who knows? I think for me it's just: fear nobody. You can definitely respect those guys and respect what they've done, but just because they've won Olympic medals or are world champions, I'm not going to go in and think that I can't beat them or that I don't have an opportunity.”
Griggs is 21, the same age Ronnie Delany was when sprinting to 1500m gold at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. In the days after Delany’s death last week, Griggs watched the clip of that last lap in Melbourne several times and he knows, as Delany proved, that just because a certain result isn’t probable, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
“That's the real pinnacle, it's one of the greatest moments in Irish athletics,” says Griggs. “His legacy is just paving the way for guys who've come after him – Eamonn Coghlan, John Treacy, Marcus O'Sullivan, Frank O'Mara – and then you have the next generation down and then the next generation down.
“It's just so inspiring to see an Irish Olympic champion. I haven't experienced that in my lifetime in athletics so hopefully we can get something to replicate that in the coming years.”
While Delany was a speed-based middle-distance runner, moving between 800m and the mile, Griggs has more of an endurance profile, moving between 1500m and 5000m while also proving highly effective at cross country.
In December, he sauntered to U-23 gold at the European Cross Country in Portugal, capping a difficult year in fine style by also leading his team to gold. At the previous year’s Euro Cross, a fall at the start of the race – in which he won silver – left him with a pain in his knee for weeks after. Subsequent scans showed up osteomyelitis, a bone infection that likely came from the wound he opened during the fall.
He was hospitalised for a week, with a PICC line put into his arm to deliver intravenous antibiotics, followed by a four-week course of oral antibiotics. He missed close to three months’ training and despite a short build-up for the summer, Griggs proved the permanency of his class, starting off with a 3:55 mile in Belfast and later setting an Irish U-23 mile record of 3:52.42.
Talent like his is exceptionally hard to find, Griggs making a relatively late start in the sport and bursting on the scene in 2021 when, aged just 16, he won the European U-20 3000m title. He went on to become the fastest Irish U-20 in history at 1500m, the mile, 3000m and 5000m, and then later claimed all those same records at U-23 level.
Under coach Mark Kirk, who has steered his career since 2021, Griggs is being carefully nurtured towards his full potential, his training volume now reaching that of a world-class senior with 95-100 miles a week. A recent addition has been double-threshold training, an approach popularised by Ingebrigtsen that sees athletes do two controlled but challenging sessions at a specific intensity in the same day.
“I'm loving that,” says Griggs. “I love to run, I love the miles so he's being very controlled about it, very slowly implemented so that we're not pressing it too much. Now I'm at the point (with) training where you can start to shine at a senior level so I'm just hoping that we can stay injury free in the lead-up to the summer and see what we can do with that block behind us.”
The national indoor 3000m final proved a great tune-up for what he’ll face in Torun tonight, given McElhinney had finished fourth in the European indoor 3000m final and Coscoran was sixth in last year’s world indoor 3000m final.
Coscoran, the fastest Irishman ever at 1500m and the mile, will be there alongside him, along with so many of the world’s best, guys that Griggs used to watch on TV from afar, hoping he would one day join them. Now that he has, he has no intention of just making up the numbers.
“You've allowed yourself to be in a world final,” he says. “Why not dream big?”
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