Travelling from four continents to enliven the Olympic ideal
Tuesday September 24th 2002
THE town square looked spick and span in dappling sunlight, the band thumped out a giddy medley and the old champion told jokes against himself.
Ronnie Delany was in Nenagh on Saturday. Still shaking hands, still signing sheets, still smiling for the flashbulbs. Or as he remembered Jackie Kyle
once telling him "still dining out on that medal." It was a gorgeous day on the courthouse steps, a lovely milieu.
A reminder of times past when track and field was about essences, not masquerade or rumour. Delaney was in town for the official unveiling of
memorial statues celebrating three Olympic champions with Nenagh roots. And, for a day at least, the old Olympic ideal felt enlivened.
"Imagine," smiled Ronnie "all these years on, we are celebrating the achievements of these men. That's what makes the Olympics special. Olympic
champions are never forgotten."
They came from four continents to commemorate the deeds of Johnny Hayes, Matt McGrath and Bob Tisdall. To see three startlingly lifelike bronze
statues set in stone, acknowledging the threads that bind these champions to the north Tipperary town.
Tisdall, the only one still alive, is 95 now and living in Queensland. He has lived the kind of life that makes memories of Babe Didrikson seem dull and
uneventful. Tisdall did his first parachute jump at the age of 86. Four years later, he crewed at the Lough Derg regatta.
When the Olympic torch arrived in Queensland two years ago, he jogged with it for 500 yards. All his life he has been as indefatigable as a child on
Christmas morning.
He grew up in Nenagh, rowed in regattas at Garrykennedy, played rugby for Nenagh Ormond and Garryowen before going to study at Cambridge. He
travelled Europe as aide-de-comp to a Maharaja and, to prove him self to the Irish selectors prior to the 1932 Olympics in Los Ange les, Tisdall
competed in 40 separate events over 12 days on a uni versities' tour of Scotland.
At the team training camp in Ballybunion, he made his own hurdles out of driftwood so he could practice on the strand. He raced (and lost to) the
electric hare at the local greyhound track.
The Irish travelled to those Olympics by boat to New York, then train to LA. It is said that an exhausted Tisdall stayed in bed for eight days upon
arrival. He did not set foot on the Olympic track until the day of the heats.
Yet, in winning the 400 metre hurdles gold (he had competed over the distance only three times previously), Tisdall set a time that would not be
matched for the next 20 years. He was deprived the official record though as he had knocked the final hurdle, a rule that is now obsolete. In
effect, Tisdall changed the boundaries of the sport.
McGrath did much the same at the Stockholm Games of 1912. He didn't win gold in the 16lb ham mer with a throw, he won it with a missile launch.
McGrath's was the biggest victory margin (20 feet and ten inches) in Olympic hammer-throwing history. In fact, the only threat to him was the
stadium rim. Even his worst throw was 15 feet further than the silver medal.
Think about that. In 1968, it was said that Bob Beamon had "broken the Olympic record by half a century" with that mind- blowing leap in Mexico
City. Fifty six years earlier, McGrath seemed to have done it by a mil lennium.
He was born in Curraghmore, seven miles outside Nenagh, in 1875. As a youth he would walk to town to compete at the local Showgrounds. The
records show he also won a half-mile race at Kilaloe sports and a 100 metres in Portroe. But he emigrated to New York to work in his uncle's bar
and built his legend in an American singlet.
Nenagh stayed close to his heart, though, McGrath return ing after his silver medal win at the London Olympics (1908) to set three world records at
the Showgrounds and coming home again in 1912 to visit his old haunts around Carrigatoher.
Hayes was American-born, but the son of Michael, a Nenagh man from Silver Street. And his story is a reminder that the purity of Olympianism has
long been under threat from pharma cology.
Hayes won marathon gold at the 1908 Games in London after the Italian, Dorando Pietri, was disqualified. Pietri made it first across the line, but did
so in the arms of officials after collapsing on the track. It was subsequently discovered that the Italian has taken a cocktail of syrychinine (a heart
and brain stimulant) and atropine (a muscle relaxant) four miles from the finish that almost killed him.
Hayes subsequently wrote of coming home to Nenagh to see his grandfather after the victory and "being drawn through a city (sic) ablaze with
torch lights and bonfires. I shall never forget the hearty greeting."
On Saturday, Nenagh cele brated these three extraordinary men with a lovely, dignified cere mony. The sun shone, the light danced, the air felt
pure. It was a throwback day.
To when men just ran and jumped and threw for the pride of it. And the memory of home.