This Friday, an opening ceremony will herald the beginning of the Olympic Games in Paris, the third time the city has hosted the event after doing so in 1900 and 1924.
The 1924 games were arguably the most significant from an Irish point of view. They were the first Olympics that Ireland competed in as a separate nationality, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ruling that it was entitled to do so in 1922.
Irish people had competed in previous Olympic Games, primarily under the British umbrella, but also representing the United States, Canada and South Africa.
Between 1896 and 1920, a total of 36 gold, 31 silver and 13 bronze medals were won by Irish-born competitors. However, 1924 was the first occasion athletes could compete solely under the Irish banner, an important symbol of nationhood.
Ireland’s presence at those Paris Olympics was largely due to the work of Limerick-born John James (JJ) Keane, who became the first Irish member of the IOC in 1922.
As chair of the Irish Olympic Council since its establishment in 1920, Keane spearheaded the campaign for Irish athletes to contest, as of right, for their own country of birth.
Crucially, Keane, an avid nationalist, insisted that Ireland rather than the Irish Free State should be the unit recognised – highly significant given that most Olympic sports have remained all-Ireland following the partition of the island.
Irish competitors did not distinguish themselves in the 1924 Olympics, with success only achieved in the art competitions where Jack B Yeats won a silver medal for his painting The Liffey Swim, and Oliver St John Gogarty won bronze for his poem Ode to the Tailteann Games
The IOC had refused Ireland’s entry to the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, the first games since the First World War, stating that it did not have the power to recognise new states.
There was resistance from the IOC British representative Reverend Robert de Courcy-Laffan, who successfully argued for recognition being deferred until such time ‘when the Irish question would be solved politically’.
Although there was some opposition from certain British quarters, once the Irish Free State was established the Irish claim for separate recognition was recognised, allowing it to compete in its own right for the first time in 1924.
Despite the political turmoil at the time, Keane sought to unite athletics which was primarily controlled by two separate bodies: the GAA’s Athletic Council (of which Keane was president) and the Irish Amateur Athletic Association.
Although there were many stumbling blocks, including over GAA-driven exclusionary rules for British Army and police personnel, the two bodies amalgamated by Paris 1924 to form the National Athletic and Cycling Association of Ireland (NACAI). While the unity did not last for long, with the sports of athletics and cycling being arguably more divided than football through much of the 20th century, it survived the Olympics that year.
At the opening ceremony on July 4 1924, Ireland participated in the parade of nations under the name Irlande. Ireland competed in art, football, athletics, boxing, water polo and lawn tennis, being represented by a team of 48 – 46 men and two women. The two women were tennis players Phoebe Blair-White and Hilda Wallis.
Belfast-born athletes represented Ireland in boxing, water polo and athletics. However, as historian Tom Hunt has pointed out, only the eight athletes participating in athletic events were in the opening ceremony parade as the footballers had already competed and returned home, while the other competitors had not yet arrived.
As the football competition was the first event held at the Olympics, the Irish team – the first international team selected by the recently formed Football Association of Ireland/Irish Free State following the split with the Irish Football Association in 1921 – was the first sporting body to represent Ireland at the Olympic Games. Its first match was against Bulgaria on May 28. With the tricolour flying in the ground, the team ran onto the field to the tune of Let Erin Remember.
The choice of anthem was a source of some contention. The directors of the IOC had asked the Free State government to supply them with copies of the national anthem, but the Free State had no official anthem by 1924.
The Soldier’s Song was generally played at national functions. The Department of External Affairs believed that “while it was excellent as a revolutionary song, both words and music are unsuitable for a National Anthem”. It was believed A Nation Once Again was also inappropriate, opting for the Thomas Moore melody Let Erin Remember instead.
It soon became common practice to play The Soldier’s Song’ at functions within the Irish Free State and Let Erin Remember at functions abroad. The Executive Council of the government, stipulating in 1926 that there should be uniformity, directed for the The Soldier’s Song to be used at home and abroad. The Irish language version, Amhrán na bhFiann, which is sung almost exclusively now, only became common from the 1930s.
While the Irish football team defeated Bulgaria in the first round, it lost to the Netherlands in the quarter-final. Overall, Irish competitors did not distinguish themselves in the 1924 Olympics, with success only achieved in the now-defunct art competitions where Jack B Yeats won a silver medal for his painting The Liffey Swim, and Oliver St John Gogarty won bronze for his poem Ode to the Tailteann Games.
Poor training and even less funding largely accounted for the poor performances, with the cash-strapped Free State government focusing its sporting budget on the Tailteann Games, an ‘Irish race’ version of the Olympics in many respects, that took place shortly after the Paris competitions.
A century on, and the landscape has changed. In 2024, the number of Olympians who have represented Ireland in the intervening period, north and south, will surpass 1,000.
This year will see the largest Irish team of over 130 competing, backed by increased funding from Sport Ireland, from €59 million invested in Tokyo in 2021 to €89m for Paris 2024.
There is a real air of excitement too with many strong medal hopes in sports such as rowing, boxing, gymnastics and swimming. And in athletics, the prospects are arguably stronger than they have been since the heroics of Pat O’Callaghan and Bob Tisdall in 1932.
Rhasidat Adeleke has a great chance of reaching superstardom status she seems destined for and Ciara Mageean (as long as she uses her camogie skills not to get boxed in) could crown off her stellar career by seeing the tricolour raised for her in Paris, 100 years after the Irish flag first appeared in Olympic competition.
