Representatives of the Olympic Federation of Ireland (OFI), Olympians and Paralympians will be the GAA’s guests of honour at the Galway-Waterford camogie quarter-final and Limerick-Cork All-Ireland hurling semi-final.
The event will mark 100 years since the first official Team Ireland competed at an Olympics in Paris in 1924, a team that featured 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. He was also Ireland’s first ever representative on the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The summer of 1924 also featured the staging of the Tailteann Games by the Irish Free State, a Celtic Olympiad for the Irish diaspora which was largely based at Croke Park. The Tailteann Games were also staged in 1928 and 1932.
As well as a presentation to the OFI, the GAA will facilitate the staging of a novel mile run on the pitch, an event that has not been held at Croke Park since 1966 when the late Kerry Olympian and ‘Irish Independent’ GAA and athletics correspondent Tom O’Riordan set a time of 4.12.1 for five laps of the pitch at a Tailteann games athletics event. A field of runners is being assembled to challenge that record this weekend.
GAA president Jarlath Burns gave added context to the links between the GAA, athletics and the Olympic movement.
“We are the Gaelic Athletic Association and as such we are enormously proud of the rich history and heritage that exists in the athletics exploits of our members,” said Burns.
“From our first President and internally renowned athlete Maurice Davin through to the outstanding role model and now new European champion and camogie player Ciara Mageean, there is a link between Gaelic games and athletics that is worth celebrating,” added Burns.
“This occasion affords us the opportunity to not only commemorate our athletics past, but also remember the achievement that was the Tailteann Games, the involvement of GAA members in previous Olympics, and especially wish the 2024 Team Ireland ‘bon voyage’ and ‘adh mór’ ahead of their departure for Paris next week.”
The announcement comes on the day that the GAA also remembers the achievement of GAA member Tom Kiely from Ballyneale in Tipperary, regarded as the greatest athlete of his generation. On this day 120 years ago was crowned all-round champion in the 1904 Games in St Louis.
