Olympic scholarship... Just for the record

Ryle Dwyer’s piece on the first Irish man to win an Olympic medal made for interesting reading but contains one piece of mythology that should be retired at this stage of Olympic scholarship.

There was never any question of John Pius Boland engaging in any type of nationalist protest regarding the hosting of the Union flag to mark his victories in Athens.

This is made clear in the diary he kept of his journey and time at Athens, which was discovered in 1974. At the presentation ceremony, Boland was so concerned when he inadvertently committed a minor breach of protocol as he forgot “to descend the steps backward” that he felt concerned enough to mention it in his diary and was at pains to explain that he made up “for the omission by bowing” when he got to the bottom.