Ronan Keating on athletics: Part 1

Irish pop legend Ronan Keating is one of the 35,000 starters in this year’s London Marathon. However, as spikesmag.com discovered the singer/presenter has a very special bond with track and field.

It's not often spikesmag.com gets to hang out in Michelin Three Star restaurants chatting to pop icons. Sweaty changing rooms or mixed zones down in the bowels of stadiums are our usual choice of location, but today is different. We have been invited to hang out with Ronan Keating at Michel Roux jnr’s swanky Le Gavroche eatery in central London.

Keating is, in case you didn’t know, a fairly famous fellow with numerous talents. He fronts Boyzone, one of the world’s biggest pop bands and also boasts a successful solo career. He is a successful TV presenter, performed at the 2006 soccer World Cup opening, has dueted with Elton John and sung for the Pope... twice!

So what is he doing chatting to spikesmag.com? Well, to talk athletics, which is (as we discovered) a life-long passion.

For a young boy growing up in Ireland it was not music but athletics which pre-occupied his thoughts. It was not Jerry-Lee Lewis but Carl Lewis he wanted to emulate.

His father, Gerry, had been an accomplished sprinter and his older brother, Gerard, was an Irish international 400m athlete, who was good enough to win a scholarship to Iowa University in the USA.

For Keating "the baby of the family", athletics was a natural pursuit.

"My dad was very athletic he ran a lot and played a lot of Gaelic football," he explained. "We are a very sporting family... all my brothers played [Gaelic] football. Gerard became very good. I was only a young kid at the time, so I grew up watching him."

Keating quickly followed his sibling on to the track and first competed for the Mid-Sutton Athletic Club in Bayside, Dublin before later moving on to the Dunshaughlin AC.

Although he tried a range of events, he discovered a natural gift for the sprints and proved his ability when winning the All Ireland under-13 200m title in a personal best time of 23.4, where he defeated among others the 2000 European Indoor 1500m silver medallist James Nolan.

It was to prove the highlight of an athletics career which quickly gave way to a burgeoning music career. Yet he insists athletics has always remained close to his heart.

"There is nothing quite like the feeling when the starter says, 'tracksuits off' and you get into blocks," he says with a genuine passion. "I’m quite a competitive character and [in athletics] you are on your own... it is an individual sport. It’s not like soccer or [Gaelic] football it’s quite an individual thing and I’m quite an independent character. I love the sport, I love to be healthy, I love to eat well and coming from a family where we all ran – running is in the blood. I totally believe that. I see it in my daughter now... she is definitely going to be a runner. She’s eight years of age, but when she runs down the street you can see it. She’s a runner. It’s the form."

Keating recalls passionately re-running video after video of the sprint battles of Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis – his boyhood hero – as a child and now sees the same passion in his son when he watches Usain Bolt.

Which brings us to the Jamaican sprint king. How does the former champion Irish schoolboy sprint champion view the man they call Lightning Bolt? "He was awesome, he was incredible," says a wide-eyed Keating. "He just has it. He’s a superstar, and now he’s going to smash every record. He’s far the best – ever. I love his confidence – I love his style. He’s young and he’s got it – I’m quite envious, I guess."

Keating is already looking forward to the 2009 IAAF World Championships in Berlin and he has more than half-an-eye on the London 2012 Olympic Games. "I will be there on the sideline watching," he says of the next Games. "I cannot wait to see the 100m, 200m and 400m. I’ll be there in the front run in 2012. I watched most of the last Olympics at home. I loved it – it was just great. I really enjoy watching athletics and the track for me is a very natural place. I’m drawn to it very easily."

***Ronan Keating is running the Flora London Marathon is aid of Cancer Research UK

***Tomorrow on spikesmag.com read about how Keating is preparing for the 2009 London Marathon and what music he listens to while training