Ireland’s most unexpected Olympic medal
Episode 5 - John Treacy achieves sporting immortality in his first marathon
Greatest Irish Olympic Stories Never Told
Ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, we look at the Irish Olympic stories you didn't know, from Jack B Yeats winning Ireland's first ever medal in painting to the boxing clergyman who fought Franco
The Corkman once hailed in the US as ‘the Cajun sportsman of the century’
Episode 4 - Seán Moran on the remarkable life of Fanahan McSweeney
The race walker who broke his back just days before the 2004 Athens Olympics
Episode 3 - How Jamie Costin salvaged his Olympic dreams to compete in Beijing four years later
Mary Purcell: A pioneering multi-distance athlete for whom anything seemed possible
Even while working as a full-time pharmacist and later rearing a young family, the Dublin runner just kept breaking new ground
The surprising story of who won Ireland’s first Olympic medal and for what it was awarded
Episode 1 - Malachy Clerkin on how Ireland earned its first silverware at the Olympic Games
Maybe ‘Rattle’ Barrett chopped off his nose and stuck it back on. It is hard to separate the man from the myths
Corkman Frederick Whitfield Barrett won gold and bronze in polo at the Olympics before training the winner in the Scottish Grand National, part of an epic life that encouraged others to append legends to his name
An Olympian, a revolutionary and a Christy Moore song: Bob Hilliard was the boxing Irish clergyman who fought against Franco
It is unlikely that many Irish Olympians could lay claim to getting a mention in a Christy Moore song and being early proponents of the notion that you should ‘vote early, vote often’
Cathal Lombard’s Olympics story sounded too good to be true. In the end, it was
Athlete went in a year from being barely known outside of Cork to preparing for the 2004 Athens Olympics as the fastest non-African in the world over 10,000m. It really was too good to be true
‘Condemned for bringing politics into sport’: The Irish cyclists who caused chaos at the Olympics
At a time of bitter factionalism in Irish cycling, and bloodshed in Northern Ireland, a group of riders plotted to disrupt the Olympic road race to make a point
‘If he had his pipe in his mouth, I was playing well’: Victor Costello on his father’s influence in his success
Paddy Costello was a shot putter, an international rugby player and an inspiration to his son, to whom he conveyed tips through his deeds, notes and pipe
Requiem for a middleweight: the life and death of Darren Sutherland
He was an Olympic medallist, but that was only one side of Sutherland. Fifteen years after his death, his family continues to remember him as the ‘amazing man’ he was outside the ring
Eamonn Fitzgerald: ‘He was a superstar before the term was known’
When Fitzgerald died in June 1958 after contracting tuberculosis, less than a dozen mourners attended his funeral at Deansgrange Cemetery in Dublin
Tailteann Games: How the Irish State’s first big international event set out to rival the Olympics
The ancient games had a star-studded revival 100 years, and with a heavy influence from the GAA, set out to rival the Paris Olympics of 1924
Jamie Costin was 27, in the shape of his life, ready for the Olympics. Then he got hit by a truck
The Waterford racewalker suffered two broken vertebrae and had to wear a body cast for five months but still made it back to compete in Beijing four years later
Terry McHugh: Six Olympics, two sports and one man determined to do it his way
One of Ireland’s first full-time athletes, Terry McHugh was never afraid of taking on impossible odds, and going where no one had gone before
The policemen who met in a unique edition of the Cork-Kerry rivalry, for Olympic glory
Kerryman Ned Barrett, holder of an All-Ireland winner’s medal for hurling, beat Corkman Con O’Kelly to claim the title of British heavyweight wrestling champion in 1908. The stakes were even higher when the pair clashed again later that year ...
Fanahan McSweeney, the ‘amazing character’ who deserves to be recognised for so much more than his ominous sighting before the Munich massacre
The Corkman once hailed in the US as ‘the Cajun sportsman of the century’ and described by Eamonn Coghlan as ‘one of the greatest Irish athletes of all time’ was also an inventor, engineer and musician. One RTÉ commentator says he was ’probably the most remarkable person I’ve come across in my life’
John Treacy’s weird and wonderful year: from almost quitting to winning an Olympic medal in his first marathon
A snap decision to move to the USA, a doctor with good instincts and a large slice of luck – how the Waterford runner managed to find himself in the 1984 Los Angeles marathon
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