Just a week after he celebrated his 91st birthday, the death of Ronnie Delany was announced on Wednesday.
In a Irish sporting context, his success in winning 1500m gold at the Melbourne Olympics left an indelible mark. No Irish competitor has stepped onto the highest block on the athletics podium since.
John Treacy was the next athlete from these shores to medal but his was a silver medal in the marathon. Again, another moment that has stood the test of time, this time played out inside the Los Angeles Colosseum in 1984.
Treacy, along with another Irish athletics stalwart, Eamon Coghlan, remembered Delany, when speaking on RTÉ Radio's Morning Ireland.
"Ronnie Delany was an Olympic Champion and if you were from the sport of athletics that's the person you looked up to," was Treacy's opening remark.
"Ronnie carried that Olympic title with great joy down through the years. He always had great time to talk to people and for a lot of us he was the one that paved the way. He had done it, had done it in America and in the Olympic Games. He proved to us that Irish people could compete at the highest level on the world stage.
"It wasn't a great time for Ireland (in the 1950s) and we might have had a little inferiority complex but Ronnie certainly proved that if you have the confidence and you have the ability you can go and do it on the world stage.
"He had done it in the sport of athletics which is the most global sport of all - and in the blue riband event at the Olympic Games. He did it with style and when he met people he spoke about his Olympic medal and what it meant for him. If you were an up and coming athlete you got his time.
"What an achievement.
"It's a sad day for us but also an opportunity to celebrate this great athlete and this Olympic champion."
Coghlan, the 1983 World Champion in the 5000m and whose indoor feats in the USA earned him a nickname of some stature, namely 'The Chairman of the Boards' attended the same Villanova University in the States as Delany.
"Our careers were more or less parallel," he said, before recalling the first time he met the Arklow native.
"My recollection of Ronnie goes back to when I was a young boy starting off in athletics in the mid 1960s. My father Bill, who was an electrician, was responsible for the sound system in Croke Park, in Glenmalure Park and Dalymount Park. I used to tag along and help him, pull the wires here and there.
"When I commenced my career in athletics who lo and behold was in the Ard Chomhairle in Croke Park but only the great Ronnie Delany. My dad introduced me to the Olympic champion and Ronnie patted me on the head and said: 'Good luck in your career; I'll be watching out for you one day'. From that time on Ronnie and I became great friends. He was a great mentor of mine and guided me all the way through, even helping me to get a scholarship to Villanova University."
On his legacy, Coghlan added: "Ronnie was the pathfinder, the one to set an example, the one to whom we all wanted to live up to, and try and surpass. Any time you were seeking advice from Ronnie he was always there to help out."
And the emerging athlete from Drimnagh was only too willing to take such advice on board.
"The one thing that I picked up from Ronnie more than anything else in my career was to learn to win races.
"Don't be running for time, learn to win.
"Learn to win from the front, learn to win from the back, learn to win from the middle. Athletes can run great times and finish second, third, fourth and fifth, but winning was more important. And Ronnie was a beast when he came on to the track."
And on the latter comment, Coghlan reflected on that race in Melbourne on 1 December, 1956.
"With 180 metres to go, Ronnie Delany was at the back of the pack, everybody thought he was gone. He ran 53 seconds on a cinder track for the last lap. That would be a phenomenal time all these years on. Ronnie had it all, got to do it with such style and grace."
Other words to the now departed gold medallist were "elegant", "a gentleman", "kind" and "considerate" but he was also supremely confident, with Treacy saying: "If he didn't have that confidence, he wouldn't win, you just don't win races.
"Ronnie got the confidence from all the training he was putting in and he trained very, very well. I know he went to those Olympic Games very confident of winning a gold medal."
