Tom O’Riordan competed in the men’s 5,000 metres at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, finishing 9th in his heat after leading briefly at the end of the eighth lap.

The memory of marching into the stadium for the 5,000 metres heat remained one of the most vivid of his sporting life: ‘The buzz of the crowd when we marched out for our heat of the 5,000 metres stirred so many memories – like starting off in Kerry, going on scholarship to Idaho, the training, the effort and even the worries.’

From Ardfert, Co. Kerry, O’Riordan won the Irish Schools one-mile championship in 1956 in a record 4:35.1 – the first Kerry man to win the title. Letters to twelve American colleges secured a scholarship to Idaho State College under the inspirational coach Milton Holt, financed by his father Jack who sold two prize cattle to buy the air ticket.

O’Riordan trained with the great Hungarian coach Mihaly Igloi’s group in San Jose, California in 1960.

He established nine Irish records in 1963 and in June 1964 ran 13:18.4 for the three miles at Santry Stadium – an Irish record that survived until 1972 and one of the fastest in the world that year.

He later became one of Ireland’s most distinguished athletics journalists.