The Olympics -An Irish angle

jonniebgood1

With the day thats in it a look at the Irish olympic related history is in order.

Independent Irelands first Olympic medal winner is also one of our most impressive. The winner at the time saw the importance of it:

As late as 1928, Dr Pat O’Callaghan confessed that: ‘I am glad of my victory, not for the victory itself, but for the fact that the world has been shown that Ireland has a flag, that Ireland has a National Anthem and, in fact, that we have a nationality’. http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume6/issue1/features/?id=180

He seems to have used an opponents hammer and it worked for him, the problems he endured are interesting particularly in 1932 being after he had won gold in 1928:

He won his first national title in 1927 with a throw of 143 feet. He increased that distance by a further 20 feet when he defended the title the following year, before eventually managing 167 feet at the RUC sports in Belfast. This feat earned him a place at Amsterdam '28.

The Corkonian managed to qualify from the preliminary round at the Olympisch Stadion with a throw somewhat behind his personal best. He started the final in third place and masterfully (and riskily) chose to use the hammer of the leader Oissian Skoeld. The risk paid off, as O'Callaghan broke his own national record and beat the Swede by four inches. He was the first athlete to ever win a medal representing Ireland.

O'Callaghan dominated the Irish athletics scene over the next number of years, consistently winning national titles in the hammer, the shot putt and the high jump. Despite being expected to contend at the '32 Olympics in Los Angeles, he struggled to get support from the government, the department of health refusing to grant him three months off with pay from work.

"The minister desires to point out that it is undesirable that any officer should be granted prolonged leave at the expense of the rate payers and Dr O'Callaghan should, therefore, be called upon to pay the remuneration of his substitute for the period in excess of his ordinary annual leave," a statement from the department of health read. He eventually was compensated in March 1933, some six months after the tournament was finished.

A major mix-up hindered O'Callaghan's preparations severely in Los Angeles. For the first time, the hammer throw was played on a cinder surface, a piece of information the Irish Olympic Committee failed to inform the good doctor. He wasn't allowed a change of shoe, and his spikes kept getting caught in the surface and as such he struggled to qualify for the final. O’Callaghan managed to get his hand on a hacksaw after it was over and sawed the spikes off his boots.

The Gold Rush

A second throw of 177 feet in the final was enough for him to pick up his second gold medal in a row. Interestingly, he managed this on the same day that Bob Tisdall won the gold medal in the 400m hurdles for Ireland, making it probably the greatest day in the history of Irish athletics.

A dispute between the National Athletic and Cycling (which wanted to have jurisdiction of all 32 counties) and the British Amateur Athletic Association meant that no Irish team competed at the '36 Olympics in Berlin. He had, the previous December, recorded a throw of 195 feet, more than seven feet longer than the world record then held by fellow Irishman Paddy Ryan, but the British influenced IAAF didn't recognise it. Not long after the Berlin Olympics, he retired.
http://www.joe.ie/joe-life/joe-legends/olympic-hero-dr-pat-ocallaghan-007994-1

tac foley

How very fitting that he used a hammer to hammer home the point that Ireland had a place among nations. Good for him.

tac

pedroeibar1

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

With the day thats in it a look at the Irish olympic related history is in order.

Independent Irelands first Olympic medal winner is also one of our most impressive.

Even if it was pre-Independence, I suggest that John Pius Boland, the Irish Parliamentary Party MP for South Kerry is a much better example.

A lawyer, Boland studied at Oxford and at Bonn. When visiting an old university friend in Athens where he had gone to spectate at the first modern Olympics in 1896, the friend entered him in the tennis tournament. Boland won the singles tournament, becoming the first winner of a Gold for tennis in the Olympics. He then entered the doubles event with Traun, the German runner whom he had defeated in the first round of the singles. Together, they won the doubles event.

Another contender was a close friend of Boland’s: Harold Sigersen Mahony, of Dromore Castle near Kenmare was another tennis champion and all-round sportsman. Mahony took part in the 1900 Olympics in Paris, when he won a Silver for the Singles, a Bronze for the Doubles and a Silver for the mixed doubles. Earlier, in 1895, Mahony won the singles at Wimbledon, setting, with a 57-game ‘marathon’, a record for the Wimbledon final that lasted until 1954. When training for the 1905 Wimbledon championships Mahony took a very bad fall from his bike on a downhill run at Caragh Lake, near Killorglin and died as a result of his injuries.

R.Dub.Fusilier

I came across this photo a couple of months back.

Farmer Pudsey

This is the man Tom Kiely that has the rightful claim as haveing won the first Olympic Gold medal for Ireland. He won Gold in the 1904 Games in St Louis. Refused offers to complete for the USA and GB instead paid his own way won Gold for the All around athelete ( 10 events all on in the same day equivlent to the mothern decathlon).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Kiely

From 1900-1920 Irish American athletes ( the Irish Whales ) won the hammer throw at every Olymplics the also won gold medals in Shot Putt, Discus and the weight throw.

brennan1979

Farmer Pudsey wrote: »

This is the man Tom Kiely that has the rightful claim as haveing won the first Olympic Gold medal for Ireland. He won Gold in the 1904 Games in St Louis. Refused offers to complete for the USA and GB instead paid his own way won Gold for the All around athelete ( 10 events all on in the same day equivlent to the mothern decathlon).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Kiely

From 1900-1920 Irish American athletes ( the Irish Whales ) won the hammer throw at every Olymplics the also won gold medals in Shot Putt, Discus and the weight throw.

http://www.theirishstory.com/2012/06/22/irelands-forgotten-olympians-the-irish-whales/

It's shameful that the Irish Whales are not more well known in Ireland considering their achievements.

thecommietommy

R.Dub.Fusilier wrote: »

I came across this photo a couple of months back.

Dr Pat O'Callaghan was offered to play the role of Tarzan due to his athletic build before Johnny Weissmuller took it instead !!!

http://www.castlemagner.org/DrPatOCallaghan.htm

Einhard

This is all very interesting. Thanks to those who posted.

It's somewhat annoying that, in the light of the great achievements of pre-independence athletes, that Ireland is still credited with only 23 medals at Olympic standard. From RTE to the Irish Times, this figure is constantly touted, and it serves to further consign the achievements of these great athletes to obscurity.

johnny_doyle

Convoluted links to a previous Olympics and to the lady who opened the Olympics yesterday.

A young and impoverished Andrew McCreery left Ireland and went to America where he managed to amass an enormous fortune. His son Walter McCreery won a Silver medal at the 1900 Olympics in the US Polo team.

One of Walter's sons, Robert Bruce McCreery, was killed in 1921 at the ambush at Ballyturin during the Tan War. Another son, Richard Loudon McCreery, became a General in the BA (El Alamein, Italy and BAOR). Both were accomplished horsemen, polo players and Lancers (as was another brother).

One of the horses that pulled the carriage of the then Princess Elizabeth to her coronation was called McCreery after Richard McCreery.

Farmer Pudsey

As well the very first medal awarded in the modern games was to the son of Irish immigrants, James B Connolly. He won the triple jump and was awarded the very first medal.

His parents were from the Aran Islands, He came second in the high jump and third in the long jump. You would think that with all the licience money that RTE and that they are a public service broadcaster that they would have done a series on all there early Irish Olympician's

jonniebgood1

brennan1979 wrote: »

It's shameful that the Irish Whales are not more well known in Ireland considering their achievements.

Nationalism was high amongst these men according to some of the reports-

One highly believable but probably apocryphal tale has IAAC member and discus gold medalist Martin Sheridan egging on U.S. flag-bearer Ralph Rose in his famous refusal to lower the American flag to King Edward VII at the opening ceremony, saying, “This flag dips to no earthly king.” When it came to the controversially heavy boots of the English tug-of-war team, Sheridan, in his column for the New York Evening World, quipped, “The Englishmen had to waddle out on the field like a lot of County Mayo ganders going down to the public pond for a swim.”

Rodgeb

Farmer Pudsey wrote: »

This is the man Tom Kiely that has the rightful claim as haveing won the first Olympic Gold medal for Ireland. He won Gold in the 1904 Games in St Louis. Refused offers to complete for the USA and GB instead paid his own way won Gold for the All around athelete ( 10 events all on in the same day equivlent to the mothern decathlon).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Kiely

According to this tweet today Tom Kiely is the great grandfather of former Republic of Ireland goalkeeper Dean Kiely

Dean Kiely ‏@deankiely40
Bolt is a legend, reminds me of my great grandfather Tom, Gold medal, St Louis, 1904, Decathlon, 10 events in one day! #IrishOlympian #ledj

Snickers Man

Another great legacy bequeathed to the Olympics by early Irish performers was the use of the games as a vehicle for making political propaganda. Long before Tommy Smith and John Carlos's Black Power protest in 1968 or the Munich Massacre of 1972, perpetrated on the pretext that the Olympic Committe had refused to countenance the presence of a team representing "Palestine", an Irish contingent had a successful protest at a medal ceremony.

In the 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens, considered at the time to be an Olympic event but no longer recognised as such, Irish born athletes had won several medals but not, of course, for Ireland as the country did not exist at the time as an independent entity.

However, the likes of Peter O'Connor, then the world record holder for the long jump (a distance which would remain as the Irish record until 1990!) and winner of the silver medal at those games were determined to force the issue. So during his medal ceremony he shinned up the flagpole, removed the Union Jack and replaced it with a green flag.

Interference from officials was discouraged by several other Irish born athletes who formed a guard at the bottom of the pole Among them was one of the great "Irish Whales" Martin Sheridan, who had won gold at both discus and shot putt at those games who apparently stood impassively with his arms folded and what a later generation might have called a "Go ahead, make my day" look on his face.

True story.

Cardinal Richelieu

Einhard wrote: »

This is all very interesting. Thanks to those who posted.

It's somewhat annoying that, in the light of the great achievements of pre-independence athletes, that Ireland is still credited with only 23 medals at Olympic standard. From RTE to the Irish Times, this figure is constantly touted, and it serves to further consign the achievements of these great athletes to obscurity.

I never understand why they like to proclaim Ireland medal count as a source of pride, its fairly poor among nations of similar size and economic power.

• Ireland 23 medals in 24 Games
• Croatia 27 medals in 11 Games.
• Latvia 20 medals in 18 Games.
• Lithuania 16 medals in 14 Games.
• Portugal 22 medals in 28 Games.
• Slovenia 22 medals in 12 Games.
• Slovakia 24 medals in 9 Games.
• Czech Rep 49 medals in 9 Games.
• Denmark 171 medals in 37 Games.
• Estonia 38 medals in 18 Games.

jonniebgood1

Off topic posts deleted.

Moderator.

R.Dub.Fusilier

Setanta sports are running a programe about the Irish and the Olympics calle "No earthly King" which refers to the USA flag bearer refusing to dip the flag to the British King in London in 1908.

jonniebgood1

R.Dub that is Ralph Rose that would not dip the flag to the British king- I mentioned him in post 11 and he seems an interesting man as do the Irish whales. He died aged 29 of typhoid fever. There is some general background on him here

Ralph Rose, a giant of the sporting world in every sense, won three gold medals, two silvers and a bronze, spread over three Summer Games. He delighted big crowds at athletic exhibitions and set numerous records for strength, then became a city prosecutor. He also played the central role in an incident that ignited debate for decades and contributed to the passage of a federal law.

And Rose, the amiable titan from Healdsburg, did all of it before his 30th birthday. He died of typhoid fever in 1913, at the age of 29.http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20120804/SPORTS/120809767/-1/archive?Title=Ralph-Rose-Sonoma-County-s-first-Olympian

And the dipping itself:

The tradition then, and many years after, was for each national delegation to dip its flag at the opening ceremony while marching past the head of state of the host country — in this case Edward VII. Even more than his massive throws, Rose would one day be known as the man who refused to lower the Stars and Stripes before the king of England.

But the incident is shrouded in questions, the first one being: Did Rose really not dip the flag?
Writing in the Journal of Olympic History in 1999, Dr. Bill Mallon and Ian Buchanan researched the event in detail and concluded that, yes, Rose probably did walk past the royal box without lowering the American flag. They also noted that Rose probably DID dip the flag at a second opportunity, when all of the flag-bearers lowered their staffs in unison.

“Ralph Rose, carrying an American flag in the parade in the stadium, failed to lower it when passing the king's stand, as those of all other nations did,” fellow thrower Sheridan wrote in the Chicago Record-Herald on July 14, 1908. “Rose did not give any reason for not lowering his flag.”

Rose eventually claimed that no one had advised him to dip, an improbable explanation. The athletes had rehearsed the ceremony twice, and every major English newspaper had printed the order of events for several days before the games began.

It is possible Rose was miffed that the display of flags ringing brand-new White City Stadium for the opening ceremony did not include the American flag. (The Swedish flag also was omitted, and the British Olympic Association apologized for what it deemed an inadvertent mistake.) It is just as likely that Rose, an Irish-American, had more personal reasons for refusing to acknowledge the English monarch.

Rose's action, or lack of it, would later be applauded by American patriots and derided by English traditionalists. At the time, it didn't cause even a ripple. As Mallon and Buchanan point out, the gesture went unmentioned in the local press. The Brits either didn't notice or simply did not care.

So it seems more is made of this now. I did not see the setanta programme to see if they concluded the same as this article.