As a former lecturer in philosophy at Ulster University, Bull - more formally Dr Mike Bull OBE - is as precise and articulate as you might expect within the pages of an autobiography that has appeared, a little surprisingly, more than 40 years after he finished his main athletics career.

By that point Bull had earned two Commonwealth Games golds and a silver as well as competing at two Olympics, reaching the final at the 1968 Mexico Games.

Starting in 1966, Bull amassed a record 69 appearances for Britain and Northern Ireland - but more particularly the latter.

He was born and raised in Belfast, near where his English father, the superbly-named John Bull - who had served with distinction during the Second World War as a Royal Navy petty officer - was stationed as a physical training instructor.

In his post-athlete life Bull established gymnasiums in Belfast and Bangor, won the 1985 Superstars competition, became a successful TV sports commentator and founding member of the sports charity SPARKS and was also employed as strength and conditioning coach for the Ulster and then Irish rugby union teams.

His account in Mike Bull - An Olympian’s Story (Ballyhay Books, £12.00 ($16.20/€14.30)) starts with his recollection of that key career moment as he teetered on the brink of a humiliating failure to register an opening mark at the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Kingston.

Then a 19-year-old second-year student at Queen’s University in Belfast, Bull had arrived in Jamaica as the Northern Irish record-holder with a best of 4.63 metres, or 15ft 2in in what was the current coinage.

But in his first big international championship Bull had erred on the side of caution by starting at the "safe" height of 4.30m (14' 1"). And the safe course was beginning to look distinctly perilous…

"Here I was at the end of the runway, my knees knocking and my legs feeling like jelly," he writes. "I had hit the bar off twice and now it was my third and final attempt… that crossbar set at 14ft looked awful high, that runway in the Kingston national stadium felt a very lonely place."

So far, so scary. But Bull is able to delve a little deeper than the average athlete into what was assailing him at that moment.

"My brain was undergoing what sports psychologists nowadays call an 'Amygdala Hijack', where the primitive 'fight, flight or freeze' response has been activated by a small, almond-shaped mass of brain cells, the amygdala.

"The sheer terror of my impending failure was raising my heart rate, already racing with an adrenaline surge making my heart palpitate against my vest…

"I recall trying to take breaths to calm my racing heart. I mentally rehearsed a couple of basic, key points of technique like 'get the pole up high at take-off' and 'press the lower arm hard against the pole'.

"The effect of these reasoning nanoseconds, unknown to me at the time, was to moderate the Amygdala Hijack and allow the athlete, me, to utilise the heightened physical state to execute my ingrained jumping ability. Almost like going on automatic pilot."

Bull cleared the bar "by a mile" and four further first-time clearances saw him claim silver in a United Kingdom record of 4.75m (15' 6").

"Everyone has a moment in time, a formative experience in life, and this was mine…" he adds. "My life’s direction was fixed at this point by my success."

Bull came through what he describes as his "pivotal moment in sport".

But it is the story of how he overcame the deeply disturbing background of Belfast’s violence and civil unrest - in company with his training partner Mary Peters, who would win the 1972 Olympic pentathlon title - that forms the most compelling part of his narrative.

During the height of the Troubles, Bull and Peters would be urged onwards and upwards in the Belfast gym run by the charismatic bodybuilder Buster McShane who died in a car crash in 1973.

Bull recalls how, each night after training, he would see Peters home across the city to her flat on the Antrim Road, negotiating numerous armed barricades in so doing.

"Her accommodation was in the same building as a flat to which three young British soldiers were lured to their deaths on March 9, 1971 by the feminine charms of their slayers and the promise of something more alluring than bullet in the back of the head," Bull recalls.

Peters trained on a concrete shot put circle laid by her father in a Portadown field; in Buster’s city gym; or, for much of the winter, alongside Bull at the Shore Road hockey pitches - in his words, "often a rain-sodden or snowbound mess of cinders and dirt."

Bull adds: "As for expert coaching, a coach was someone who would dig the shot out of the muddy hole in the ground and produce a rag with which to clean it for the next effort, not the highly-paid technical analyst who would film and examine your skills each session."

Peters - not as tall or naturally athletic as her two main German rivals at the Munich Olympics, Heidi Rosendahl and Burglinde Pollak - set a world record of 4,801 points at the age of 33.

Early the following year, each still hurting from the untimely loss of their mentor, Bull and Peters won respective golds in the decathlon and pentathlon at the Christchurch 1974 Commonwealth Games.

It was, effectively, the final flourish of their careers - although Bull still can’t give it up. In July last year, aged 75, he got back into training and now has his sights set on World Masters competition…