A pep talk sparked a lightbulb moment that set the Irishman on a path to three world indoor titles. A key event was the 1984 Penn Relays, a final leg of 3:38.6 helping Villanova secure 4x1500m success in a meeting record of 14:52.81.

The Penn Relays is an anomaly in many ways. You’ll see nothing like it for the rest of the year. It doesn’t necessarily represent track and field as much as it represents participation. It’s like a mecca at the end of April every year at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Donald Walsh, who was an Irish runner, ended up being my coach as a youth and said: “Villanova [University in Pennsylvania] is where you need to go.” Great athletes in the past had gone there. Ron Delany. Eamonn Coghlan. Sonia O’Sullivan ended up going there. We had a tremendous history and relationship between Ireland and Villanova.

I quickly learnt that Villanova and the Penn Relays were synonymous. Jumbo Elliott, who was my coach when I was recruited and in my freshman year, felt that there was no better place to run because it was in our backyard, in our hometown. But it became this enormously stressful weekend in terms of the expectations and, up until 1983, we had never walked out of that stadium without a prize of some sort.

But Jumbo died in the spring of 1981 and I lost my way as an athlete for the three years. When British and Irish athletes come to the US, there are some that make it and some that don't. Sometimes people blame the US system but my ideology on that is that kids are kids. They're aged 18-22. You spend time partying. You spend time not focusing on what you should be doing and, in 1983, we went to the Penn Relays and walked out with nothing.

I sat behind the wall and cried by myself. I realised that I had let myself down, I’d let everybody down. I decided that I was going to quit college, I was going to go home and not come back. Looking back, I probably went into a mild depression. I really felt alone.

When I went home, I met my old coach, Donie Walsh, who also grew up in Cork and went to Villanova. You didn't meet Donie at the club. You'd meet him in a pub and he would always hang with bookies and gamblers. He loved the dog track. He loved the horse races. He sat me down in the pub, and he looked at my diary. It was one thing that he always made me keep.

After about 10 minutes of looking at it, he said: “You're an absolute disgrace. You've been given a gift and you're squandering it.” I made some excuses and he said: “Either s*** or get off the pot. Either you want to be in it or you don't. But don't go through the rest of your life blaming people for why things didn't work out for you. You need to start training if you really want to be serious.”

Of course, I came up with a different spin. I was like: “Hey, my room-mate’s coming over from the US tomorrow. I want to go camping for the week. How about we start in a week's time?” I always remember how he said: “You'll start tomorrow. You've wasted enough time as it is.” It was almost like he caught me by the shoulders and said: “Son, you're going in the wrong direction here.”

When I walked home that night, I felt 10 feet tall. There was something in me that transformed that evening. I did go camping, but I trained every day. It was transformative. I finally decided that I wanted to be a runner. I really wanted to commit to it. I wasn't going to be afraid of losing. A lot of athletes won't go out there because they're literally afraid of failure, afraid of the disappointment. I never looked at it like that.

I remember having a cup of coffee with my sister one day, and she said: “I could never do what you do in life, because you fail too many times,” but I always looked at the failure as a moment of growth and deeper understanding. How can I fix this for the next time out? How can I make it successful the next time?

And when I made my way back to the university, the team knew there was something going on, like “this guy's on a mission”. The kids started following me.

We actually started getting really good. We won our conference and we went on to NCAAs and I trained through the winter following year. I was really training with one goal in mind, that maybe I could make the Olympic team. But I needed to get some redemption at the Penn Relays.

The 4x1500m was on the Saturday but we had lost the day before in the distance relay to Arkansas. I was beaten out by Paul Donovan on the closing 1600m leg. That was our best shot – the one we should have won. People were saying we had no hope in the metric mile, that we didn't have enough depth. I was so angry though. I went back to my team-mates, and I said: “If you get me within 50 yards of Paul on Saturday, I promise you he will not beat me.”

They got the baton to me and I sat on him and waited until the top of the turn and then went by him – and we ended up winning. When I crossed the line, I had this feeling that I still have today, of relief, redemption. It’s like the whole world got lifted off my shoulders.

And at that moment, through that year, I learned that the most important thing in life was not the fear of failure but the fear of not trying. The reason that race means so much to me is because all the rest of the stuff came after, even walking out into an Olympic Stadium, walking out into a world championship, the pressure I felt on that weekend when I went out there to get that redemption, nothing ever came close.

Marcus O'Sullivan factfile

Born: December 22, 1961
Events: 1500m/Mile
PBs: 3:33.61/3:50.94

Honours
1993: World Indoor Championships 1500m gold
1989: World Indoor Championships 1500m gold
1987: World Indoor Championships 1500m gold
1985: European Indoor Championships 1500m silver

This feature also appears in the April issue of AW magazine. Subscribe here