The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
CRATLOE-based Neil Cusack, who won the Boston marathon in 1974, was stunned on Monday when news of the bombing of the 2013 marathon filtered through.
The former Olympic athlete told The Clare Champion on Wednesday that he will take part in next year’s event in memory of the three people who died this week.
“I get an invitation out there every five years. Thirty years after you win it they invite you. They also invited me 35 years after I won it and it is the 40th anniversary next year,” he explained.
It took some time on Monday before Mr Cusack found out what had happened. “One of the lads at work was trying to get the results up on the internet but he couldn’t for some reason. I went home and asked my wife to try and get the marathon results up on her phone.
“Then she saw a message from my brother-in-law in Dublin, saying ‘Boston bomb’. I turned on Sky News and there it was before our eyes,” he said.
He is the only Irish winner of the Boston marathon, in a time of 2.13.39. “I’d make a prediction that next year’s event will be absolutely unbelievable and I’m glad I’m going to be back there, because they’ll want to show a total good feeling about the event and the Americans will be behind it 100%,” he said, adding that he wanted to give something back to the city, whose marathon he competed in “four or five times”.
Neil, from Limerick, represented Ireland in the 1972 Munich and 1976 Montreal Olympics. He also won the Dublin city marathon in 1981.
On Wednesday afternoon, investigators recovered the lid from a pressure cooker apparently used as the explosive device.
The discovery came as the head of the Department of Homeland Security told a Senate panel in Washington that officials, with the FBI, continue to investigate the bombing as a solitary act of terror.
