Irish Olympians who won pre-1922 deserve their place on our ‘podium’
These, he said proudly, were the men who had won Olympic medals for Ireland; as Treacy crossed the line second, Magee named him excitedly as the 13th.
It was a great achievement for Treacy, already a double world cross-country champion, and a great moment for Irish television viewers: Treacy won Ireland’s only medal of the games, in its final event. Magee was correct in those he named, but in doing so he did not honour the achievements of the Irishmen who won Olympic medals before this State came into existence, and who won those medals for Ireland, even if they wore the colours of other countries.
Two years ago, my friend, Ciaran O’hEadhra, asked me to be a reporter in a television documentary he was making, for broadcast ahead of the London Olympics. He wanted to tell the story of the Irishmen (it was all men) who had competed in the Olympics before the formation of the State.
To my embarrassment, I knew nothing of Martin Sheridan, Peter O’Connor, Tom Kiely, John Daly and others, all Irish-born Olympians. I had thought that Pat O’Callaghan, winner of the gold in the hammer, in Amsterdam, in 1928, and again in Los Angeles four years later, was our first Olympic winner.
O’Callaghan was following in an incredible tradition of Irish field athletes, many of whom specialised in throwing. Most are names known only to the most dedicated of sporting historians, or in the local areas from which they hailed. Yet they have a great history of achievement, not just at Olympic Games, but in other major athletics competitions, too.
Ciaran convinced me that their stories were worthy of telling to a new audience, not just for their individual excellence but for their commitment to their country, which they were denied the opportunity to represent, and of the political gestures they made through sport.
And so, with the assistance of Broadcasting Authority of Ireland funding, our journey through the early years of the modern Olympics began. There is little or no video archive footage of their achievements, but there is a wealth of newspaper coverage and photographs, and there are people who want to keep the history alive.
We made a programme similar to Who Do You Think You Are? except it was about Irish athletic history. It brought us to places such as Athens, London, St Louis, New York and Bohola.
Why Bohola in County Mayo, where we showed the documentary last night to a local audience in the Martin Sheridan Community Centre? Well, it was because of that man Sheridan, who, it can be argued, is the greatest Irish Olympian of all, even if he is rarely recognised, or too easily described as American.
Sheridan was a superstar in the first decade of the 20th century. His obituary in the New York Times described him as “one of the greatest athletes [the United States] has ever known”. But he was an Irishman, who emigrated from Mayo at the age of 18, and who sadly, prematurely, died a day before his 37th birthday, in 1918, one of the earliest victims of that year’s terrible flu pandemic.
I visited his grave at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York, where the inscription on the giant granite Celtic Cross on his grave reads: “Devoted to the Institutions of his Country, and the Ideals and Aspirations of his Race. Athlete. Patriot.”
Sheridan had embraced the opportunities provided to him by emigration to the United States. He served in the New York Police Department, a job that gave him ample opportunity to compete in events for the Irish American Athletic Club (a remarkable institution in itself that contributed significant funds to the fight for Irish independence).
Sheridan was an American hero and retains his place in its sporting history, as we discovered when we visited the USA Track & Field’s ‘hall of fame history gallery’ in Washington Heights, Manhattan. There, to our surprise, among tributes to the likes of Carl Lewis, Jesse Owens and other iconic American athletes, was a display with two of Sheridan’s medals, one from the 1904 Saint Louis games and one from Athens, in 1906. In his own way, in his own time, he was a big star.
But Sheridan was an Irish hero at the time, too, and, unlike many other emigrants who simply could not afford to do so, his sporting achievements meant that he was able to return on occasions to Ireland, such as to visit his brother, who stayed in Ireland and married a sister of Michael Collins. On one of his trips home, he brought a long vault that had been presented to him by the King of Greece in Athens to mark his standing as the finest competitor at the games. It now rests on the wall in the community centre.
The Athens games were marked by a show of Irish defiance, one of the earliest uses of the event to make a political protest. There was an incident at the medal ceremony for Peter O’Connor, who had won second place in the long jump (in highly controversial circumstances, given that many felt political manoeuvring by the British, who were angry with him for insisting on being described as Irish and wearing a green jersey, had denied him gold). When the British flag was raised up the flagpole, O’Connor went after it, to the consternation of the watching Greek and British royalty. He pulled it down and replaced it with a green Irish flag, with a gold harp embossed on it, as the two other (unwilling) Irish members of the British team, helped by American team members, prevented officials from going up after him.
And it was another incident involving a flag that led to the title of this documentary. It has long been believed that the decision of the American team not to dip its flag to Hitler at the 1936 Berlin games was following a precedent set by Sheridan in London in 1908. The story goes that US flag-bearer Ralph Rose refused to dip the flag to King Edward VII on the basis that “this flag dips to no earthly king”, an expression of both Irish and American antipathy to the British monarchy. Our documentary discovered a somewhat more complex story, however.
IN the last week, I’ve interviewed many of our previous Olympic greats for the special Last Word Olympic celebration programme that we broadcast, on Today FM yesterday evening from Bohola. I recorded interviews with the likes of Sonia O’Sullivan (silver in 2000); Michael Carruth (gold in 1992); Eamon Coghlan (fourth twice, in 1976 and 1980); John Treacy (that silver in 1984) and Kenneth Egan (silver in 2008). All of them spoke about the pride of representing their country, of wearing their green kit. I spoke to traveller Francie Barrett about his pride as an Irishman in carrying his country’s flag in the opening ceremony at the Atlanta Olympics. Their predecessors were denied the opportunity by the politics of the time, forced instead to be recognised as British or American, just so they could compete. But they were proud to be Irish and deserve to be recognised as such, and as winners too.
* No Earthly King, a documentary produced and directed by Ciaran O’hEadhra, will be broadcast on Setanta next Sunday evening, Jul 22, at 8.45pm.
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