He just couldn't. Couldn't bear hanging around the MCG.

Ronnie Delany's gold medal at the 1956 Olympics, then. Discuss. It will be 50 years on Friday since it happened, since word filtered back that Delany, all scrawn and skin under that flimsy green singlet, had taken on the best 1,500m runners in the world and become Olympic champion. Fifty years, during which we've reached an accommodation as a people that nothing's nothing, that it all must exist in comparison to something else. Where all achievements are but the passing of time away from being counted down on a Gerry Ryan bank holiday hitlist. And there's little enough harm in that.

But how to judge? Well, the first thing to point out is precisely what it is we're talking about here. This isn't so much about the athlete as the accomplishment. Ronnie Delany, 1 December 1956 rather than Ronnie Delany 1954-1962. There have been plenty of great careers in Irish sport but without that one day as a lion, there'd be no 50-year anniversaries to mark. So this isn't about where he himself stands in the pantheon so much as where stands that day.

When Saturday finally came, he was in knots.

On Friday, he'd been locked away in a world where only the race existed, only the race and the thousand different scenarios he'd dreamt up for it in his head. Now he arrived at the MCG, his face an artist's impression of what he made himself endure. First man he met was Charlie Jenkins.

"Man, " Charlie laughed when he saw the wreck in front of him, "I know what you're going through.

I'm sure glad my ordeal is over."

Achievements, then. Those who can keep Delany's company here must be people who made it to the outer limits of their sport's possibilities at that time. And so while Michael Carruth's gold medal in 1992 takes precedence for the sake of this argument over the hundreds of thousands of punches exchanged over the course of Wayne McCullough's career, Barry McGuigan's world title overshadows them both. We'll take Fred Daly's British Open in 1947 over the 10 Ryder Cups of Christy O'Connor Snr and the deeds (so far) of Padraig Harrington and Darren Clarke. Alex Higgins' two world titles trump Ken Doherty's one.

The final false-started but that was probably no surprise. Because in a way, the whole world had been getting ready to jump the gun on this race for two and a half years. Roger Bannister had run the first four-minute mile in May 1954 and now the Olympic 1,500m was everything. Middledistance running was everything. Once Bannister broke the barrier, everyone who was anyone tried to follow suit. It only made sense that the gold medal winner would have managed it.

Ronnie Delany was one of them. Six months to the day before the Olympic final, he had become just the seventh runner in history to do so, running 3:59 flat in California. Not only that, he was the youngest. And he was up against four others in the Melbourne final. A Dane called Gunnar Neilsen, Britain's Brian Hewson and two goldplated legends of the middle-distances, Laszlo Tabori of Hungary and the great Australian John Landy. As they walked to the line, Landy walked over to Delany to wish him luck.

We get into somewhat dicey territory when we come to people involved in teams. Those mentioned so far are or were all individuals, answerable to nobody but themselves and therefore judged on no basis but alone. We're on trickier ground with teams.

What ranks as an achievement here? Brian O'Driscoll's hat-trick in Paris in 2000, sealing Ireland's first win there in 17 years, was exceptional but someone still had to pass him the ball and whatnot. Paul McGrath was otherworldly that day in Giants Stadium in 1994 but, though he probably could have if he'd wanted to, he didn't beat Italy on his own. So maybe with team players, we'll have to bend the rules a bit. Maybe for them, it should be about the accumulation of days rather than just the one.

Christy Ring's eight All Irelands, then.

Angela Downey's 12. Pat Spillane's nine All Stars. Roy Keane's seven Premierships. Willie John McBride's captaincy of the Lions. Dermot Weld's two Melbourne Cups, triumphs of supreme planning and execution both. Try telling him horse racing isn't a team sport.

Or what about Vincent O'Brien's three consecutive Grand Nationals with three different horses in the 1950s? Or his three consecutive Gold Cups. Or his three consecutive Champion Hurdles. And that's without mentioning Nijinsky or Royal Academy any other flat horse. Or, for that matter, Ballydoyle itself, probably his crowning achievement if truth be told. Where would it rank against what Delany did?

The 12 runners, the nerves, the noise . . . there was so much to shut out. So he stayed out the back.

Murray Halberg, an unfancied American, took them through the first lap in 58.9 seconds. The second was slower, a future Aussie sub-fourminute man Merv Lincoln leading them out in 2:00.3. And all the while, Delany stayed out the back. Second last. One man behind him. Landy.

Landy was the most-loved athlete in Australia at that time. He'd been the second sub-fourminute man after Bannister and when the pair met at the Commonwealth Games in Vancouver in August 1954, they say 100 million people worldwide tuned in on radio to hear the result.

But his athletic prowess was only part of it. The other reason for his popularity lay in one of Australian sport's most famous incidents a couple of months previously. In the mile final of the national championships, he and world junior champion Ron Clarke had broken for home at the start of the third lap, only for Clarke to trip and fall. In trying to hurdle him, Landy spiked Clarke's shoulder and instead of running on, as the rest of the field naturally did, Landy stopped and apologised. Once assured Clarke was alright, he took off after the field who by now were 60 yards away.

No doubt they'd still be telling the story even if he hadn't caught and passed them on the line but he did, and they are. That was the man behind Ronnie Delany at the bell. And behind Landy were 100,000 voices willing their man home.

So where does Delany stand? He did it against the best in the world at the time and some of the best for the ages. He did it in an Olympic final with his family, his coach, his friends all on the other side of the world, reachable only by telegraph. He did it in a stadium where the biggest crowd he'd ever encountered was screaming for the other guy.

Lincoln, Hewson and a German called Klaus Richtzenhain took the bell in the lead but a dabhanded cowboy could have lassoed the whole field. Delany moved, shifted wide a touch to see what he could see. Hewson was in front but his strides were costing him more than the yards they bought were worth. Down the back-straight and it was anyone's.

Then the roar. Landy made his move. Delany tucked in behind him and bobbed along in his wake. The pair passed the field together. Less than 150 yards left. Delany chose his moment. Grabbed it. Gold.

And for all the great days of the Keanes and Rings and O'Driscolls and O'Briens, he did it alone. That's where his achievement should stand, then. Alone