Former Irish Olympic runner Gerry O’Reilly has died, aged 61.<\/p>\n
O’Reilly, who competed in the men’s 1,500m at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, was one of the best Irish middle distance runners of his era.<\/p>\n
A member of Dunboyne AC from the age of nine, O’Reilly played both soccer and GAA before fully focusing on athletics when he turned 16.<\/p>\n
He won the Irish Junior 1,500m championships before earning a scholarship to compete and study at the prestigious Villanova University where he ran sub-four-minute mile times on seven occasions, with a best of 3:54.60.<\/p>\n
The Meath man finished runner-up at the NCAA 3,000m Championships twice and won six Big East titles. In recognition of these achievements, he was inducted into the Villanova Athletic Hall of Fame in 2009.<\/p>\n
Dunboyne AC captain Tommy McDonnell paid tribute to O’Reilly and in a statement said: “A member for over 50 years, Gerry joined the club at nine years old. I had the privilege of being his juvenile trainer, watching him grow from a talented young athlete into an exceptional senior competitor and Olympian.<\/p>\n
“Less than 12 months ago, we were fortunate to have Gerry back on the track in Dunboyne for the unveiling of a commemorative wall plaque in his honour. It was a wonderful day celebrating his Olympic participation and his many other incredible achievements – little did we think then what lay ahead.<\/p>\n
“Gerry and his family have always been a massive part of our club, supporting us at every turn\u2014none more so than his father Larry and his late mother Marian.<\/p>\n
“On behalf of everyone at Dunboyne AC, we send our deepest sympathies and prayers to Gerry’s family.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Irish Olympic runner Gerry O’Reilly has died, aged 61. O’Reilly, who competed in the men’s 1,500m at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-497220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}