Christy O’Connor: Why hurling and football deserve a place on Olympic stage 

On the night in June that Ciara Mageean won a gold medal in the 1500m at the European championships in Rome, Mageean told David Gillick in her TV interview afterwards of how she had found a gap between the British pair of Jemma Reekie and Georgia Bell, which enabled her to kick for home and cross the line in first place.

“When I was getting a bit boxed in, I thought ‘Oh my God’ I have all the legs left but nowhere to go,” remarked Mageean. 

I didn’t grow up playing camogie to get boxed in.” 

As a midfielder with the Portaferry camogie club in Down growing up, Mageean’s direct and fearless running at the heart of opposition defences was what made her so difficult to stop.

If there was any hint of a gap at all, she would find a way through it. On the day after Mageean won that gold medal, her mother Catherine said that when Ciara decided to go through the gap, it was “as if she was going for goal with a hurl and a ball.” Mageean was an outstanding camogie player, making her senior debut for Portaferry at 14, but she knew her first love would eventually have to give way to her incredible running talent.

After captaining her club to a minor championship in 2010, Mageean knew what had to happen next. A few months earlier, she had gone to the World Junior Championships in Canada and won a silver medal in the 1500m, which was Ireland’s first ever medal on the track at the World Juniors.

Athletics had to be her new world, when camogie had dominated that world for so much of her life. The hurling and camogie roots grow deep in Mageean and come from both sides of her family. Both her parents played, while her father, Chris, who was known as ‘The Hunter’, was an excellent player for Down during their glorious period in the 1990s.

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Mageean’s love of Portaferry GAA has never left her, but an Olympic medal is now her dream. Mageean runs in the 1500m today for the first time in this Olympics, but her GAA past is just one story of the many unique connections the GAA has had to Olympians, and the Olympics itself, across its vast history.

On the day of the Cork-Limerick All-Ireland semi-final, the GAA also commemorated a century of Ireland’s Olympic Games’ involvement. Representatives of the Olympic Federation of Ireland (OFI), Olympians and Paralympians were the GAA’s guests of honour to mark 100 years since the first official Team Ireland competed at an Olympics in Paris in 1924.

At half-time of the hurling match, the GAA staged a novel mile run on the pitch, an event that had not been held at Croke Park since 1966.

One hundred years on from the first Paris Olympics, that first official Team Ireland included Gaelic football stars Larry Stanley of Kildare in the high jump and Mayo sprinter Seán Lavan, the player generally credited with introducing the solo run to football.

The godfather of Ireland’s Olympic participation was Limerick native JJ Keane, a member of the GAA’s Central Council who was chair of the GAA Athletics Committee from 1906 to 1922 and a double football All-Ireland winner with his adopted club Geraldines in Dublin. Keane was also Ireland’s first-ever representative on the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

There have been some incredible Olympic stories with GAA connections, especially in the early days of the association. Edmund Barrett from Ballyduff in Kerry emigrated to London and won an All-Ireland hurling medal with London Emmets. He also won tug-of-war gold at the 1908 Olympics and bronze in freestyle wrestling. Barrett remains the only holder of an All-Ireland hurling medal and an Olympic gold medal On the first eight occasions that the hammer event was staged in the Olympics, there were seven first-place finishes for Irish-born athletes with GAA links.

One of those gold medal winners was Dr Pat O’Callaghan, Ireland’s most successful Olympian winning gold in the hammer at the 1928 and 1932 Games. 

O’Callaghan also played football and hurling at home in northwest Cork and later coached Clonmel Commercials to three successive county football titles in the mid-1960s. 

Joe West from Carrigaline won an All-Ireland junior hurling medal with Cork in 1948 and played in the 1948 Munster senior final. West ran the marathon in the 1952 Olympics.

Ireland has such a strong Olympic connection that World GAA, the association’s international body is hoping to have Gaelic football, hurling and camogie included as Olympic sports at a future games.

That news emerged earlier this year at the launch of a first strategic plan for the games overseas. The intention is to broaden “the global reach and impact” of the GAA.

The first steps of that goal were taken last week. For the first time since they were official demonstration sports at the 1904 Games in St Louis, a two-day demonstration saw Gaelic football, hurling, camogie and ladies football feature as part of a sports festival in the Olympic fan zone at Chateau Vincennes in Paris.

Ireland was one of 10 countries chosen to feature in a 10-day festival of sport showcasing indigenous European sports and games. Sport Ireland nominated the GAA to feature Gaelic games with the local Paris Gaels GAA club exhibiting the games.

It’s unknown if Gaelic games will ever feature in the Olympics but a 120-year gap was bridged last Thursday and Friday when Gaelic games at least returned to the Olympic stage.