Frank O'Reilly

Personal Best: 50kmW – 4-39:10 (1963).

Frank O’Reilly was born in Dublin but moved to Birmingham in 1951 to work in a local foundry. He had started race walking with the Fingals Athletic Club, Dublin, before joining the Birmingham club Lozells Harriers. Disqualified in a race early in 1958, he was consoled by fellow walker, and Birmingham resident, Ken Matthews, who talked O’Reilly into continuing with the sport. He specialised in long-distance races, and in1958 O’Reilly won the 51.75 miles (83km) Manchester to Blackpool classic and finished second in the inaugural Leicester to Skegness 100-mile (161km) event that same year.

O’Reilly retained the Manchester-Blackpool race in 1959 and won the annual London to Brighton and back 106-mile (171km) race that year. On 2 July 1960 O’Reilly became the world’s first athlete to walk 100 miles in under 17 hours when winning the Leicester to Skegness race in 16:54:45. That performance got himself a place on the Irish Olympic team as he went on to become Ireland’s first ever race walker at the Games, finishing 20th in the 50km. It would be more than 20 years before O’Reilly’s time was beaten by another Irishman.

O’Reilly won his second Leicester-Skegness 100-miler and in doing so went under 17 hours for the second time. At that time, no other man had achieved that feat once; O’Reilly had done it twice. O’Reilly led from the start to win the London-Brighton race in 1963 (except that year it went the other way, from Brighton to London, and back. The following year saw Reilly finish second in the Leicester-Skegness race, and shortly afterwards he announced his retirement from the sport.