Tipperary athletes feature as new GAA podcast celebrates its athletics past and Olympic links

Lords of the Rings: the GAA’s Olympic Story is a new five-part podcast series that looks at the fascinating links between Gaelic games and the Olympics, featuring some of the many players who have won gold, silver and bronze while competing on the biggest stage in world sport.

Hosted by award-winning Sunday Times journalist and author Michael Foley and GAA journalist and historian Cian Murphy, they are joined by a panel of experts to look at some of the truly weird and wonderful aspects of the GAA link to the Olympics and recall some of the forgotten heroes who played hurling and football and became some of the greatest athletes in the world.

James Mitchell from Emly, Tipperary went on the Invasion Tour of America with the Tipperary hurlers in 1888 but never came home. He excelled as a weight thrower, winning bronze at the 1904 Olympics, aged 40.

This year marks a centenary of Team Ireland at the Olympics. That involvement was secured by Limerick’s JJ Keane, arguably Ireland’s greatest ever sports administrator who successfully oversaw the GAA passing the baton of athletics administration to a new National Athletic and Cycling Association of Ireland in 1922.

The GAA link to athletic excellence was well established from the off. Its first President Maurice Davin was chosen, in part, because of his status as a renowned weight thrower.

Edmund Barrett of Ballyduff in Kerry won an All-Ireland senior hurling medal in 1901 representing London and was later part of the City of London police team that won gold in 1908 in the tug of war. He also won a bronze in wrestling – making him the sole holder of All-Ireland and Olympic gold medals.

Then there was the great Tom Kiely of Ballyneale in Tipperary who was a Tipperary and Grangemockler footballer, sometime hurler and GAA Central Council representative who was also regarded as the greatest athlete in the world in his heyday.

He was a gold medal winner as an all-rounder in 1904 in St Louis. Resisting offers to officially represent Great Britain and the US, Kiely declared himself to be representing Tipperary, and Ireland.

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 and the Gaelic games connection continued in Olympic history, right up to the 2024 team with 1500m medal hopeful, European champion and Portaferry camogie player, Ciara Mageean.

Michael Foley previously produced popular podcasts for the GAA on the Croke Park Bloody Sunday centenary in The Bloodied Field in 2020 and last year with the Summer of 98.

Lords of the Rings: The GAA’s Olympics Story is a podcast available today from gaa.ie, Spotify and usual platforms.

https://open.spotify.com/show/5jxBDaXIjweehrUtD9OPep