Colm Murray MND - The Inside Track

Colm Murray image:rte.ie

I’M sitting in front of my computer screen, streaks of mascara staining my face. I can’t write anything because every time I try to read my notes, my eyes well up with tears. I’ve just watched Colm Murray’s documentary MND – The Inside Track and seeing his battle with this incurable disease is emotionally charged. I remember so clearly my shock and sadness upon hearing that Colm Murray had MND at Punchestown in November 2010.

The documentary tells two stories. It is the story of Colm Murray and his battle against this devastating disease and it is the story of the fight against MND. The two are intertwined, inseparable from each other. The various trials and experimental treatments he participates in are as much about the war as about his personal battle.

There is no self pity on show here. His sense of humour is though. MND is progressive, incurable and terminal. Using a black humour and these words he refers to the disease as the pit because it sums up perfectly.

He removed himself from the air to try and deal with the diagnosis but a visit to Willie Mullins’s yard and some wise words from the champion trainer bought him a few precious months behind the microphone.

The scenes in RTÉ are some of the most heart wrenching and poignant in the entire programme. Lou Gehrig, the outstanding baseball player who gave his name to the disease in America, decide to bench himself when the progression of MND meant he could no longer perform at an acceptable level. Colm Murray benched himself on 2 October 2010 and his last words on air are played. They are poignant and loaded with emotion as he recounts the defeat of Goldikova at Longchamp as she bows out of a glorious racing career.

The footage of him doing a job he adored, sprinkled throughout the documentary, brings into sharp relief the contrast with his role now. He dictates his report on Born to Sea’s Leopardstown report to Joe Stack, who then records the voice over. As this footage is played he says that being on air was the part of the job he loved and it is then that I can’t hold back the tears any longer.

At times, and sometimes all at once, this programme is heartbreaking, poignant, painful, terrifying, hopeful and, despite my tears, uplifting.

Colm Murray is a fantastic broadcaster whose reports from the Cheltenham festival are legendary, though sadly now consigned to history because of this terrible disease. Above all this he is an inspirational and truly remarkable man, whose courage and determination to make a difference for others in the face of such a terrifying and devastating disease is astounding.