Our forgotten Olympic hero
Five golds, but still this Mayo man is...
CALL to mind Ireland’s greatest athletes, and it’s likely that names such as Eamonn Coghlan or Sonia O’Sullivan spring to mind. Yet in the early part of the 20th century, a native of Co. Mayo became one of the country’s most decorated Olympians.
Martin Sheridan wasn’t just one of Mayo’s most renowned sons – according to The New York Times, which ran his obituary 100 years ago this week, he was ‘one of the greatest athletes the United States has ever known’.
The native of the village of Bohola certainly ranks as one of the most beloved Irish-Americans in history, and no wonder.
Martin Sheridan, known later in his career as Marty, was a standout athlete known for his versatility, going on to win nine Olympic medals, five of them gold, in his lifetime.
SHERIDAN was broad and stocky – at 6ft 3in, he weighed a good 200 pounds – and he put his considerable power to use in a wide range of sports. A giant in size, Sheridan was still agile, and could reportedly run a hundred yards in a little more than ten seconds.
Despite his Herculean reputation, his was a tragically short life. At 37, he became one of the earlier victims of the 1918 flu pandemic, and died in a hospital in Manhattan.
Perhaps fittingly, the inscription on Sheridan’s grave in Queens, New York, reads: ‘Devoted to the Institutions of his Country, and the Ideals and Aspirations of his Race. Athlete. Patriot.’
Born in 1881, and the youngest of six children, Sheridan moved to the US as a 16-year-old, along with two of his brothers. His father was active in the Fenian movement, and his brother Joe would eventually go on to marry Michael Collins’s sister Kitty.
Like many Irish immigrants, Martin and another of his brothers, Richard, signed up to New York’s finest and enjoyed a career as an officer with the NYPD. Another brother, Andrew, began training in the catering business.
Martin’s burly build came in handy, and the governor of New York City saw something in the young cop that he greatly admired, or at least felt he could use. Sheridan was appointed as the governor’s personal bodyguard. Later, he was promoted to the rank of First Grade Detective.
Around the same time as he entered the NYPD, he joined the Irish American Athletic Club, where he soon became a standout all-rounder.
At the time, Irish-American organisations such as this were thriving and plentiful, and the three Sheridan brothers snagged the first three spots in various track-and-field competitions.
Soon, Sheridan was welcomed into the Irish Whales, an elite team of Irish and Irish-American athletes who dominated weight throwing sports.
Sheridan wasn’t the largest in the group by any means: Matt McGrath was a 240-pound wedge, while Pat McDonald was 6ft 5in and 300 pounds.
Yet Sheridan made up for his relative lack of girth with a lupine hunger to succeed.
Four years after his arrival into the US, Sheridan had already set his first world record, in the discus throw. His first record (36.77 metres) was set in 1902, while his last (43.08m) was in 1909.
At the 1904 Games in St Louis, Missouri, Sheridan made his Olympic debut at the age of 23, and won his first gold medal for the discus throw.
Remarkably, he shared the gold with a man called Ralph Rose, who threw the same distance. It was the first, and only, time in Olympic history that there was a tie in discus throwing. It wasn’t an easily won victory by any means – ahead of the final three rounds, Sheridan was reportedly dismayed to find himself in third place, but fought back to the top spot.
He would again clinch gold for the same activity in 1906, and also in 1908.
In 1905, he won his first allaround championship (an event that included ten running, jumping, and weight-throwing events and was the forerunner of the decathlon). He went on to win allaround championships again in 1907 and 1909.
But before that, 1906 was a bumper year for Sheridan.
At that year’s Intercalated Games in Athens, he won silver medals in the standing high jump, standing long jump and stone throw.
Ireland’s struggle for independence had clearly aggrieved Sheridan. At the opening of the games, he decided not to dip the flag of his country while passing the Greek king’s stand.
It was a small act of rebellion, a moment of protest, with Sheridan declaring that ‘Ireland had bowed too often, but not any more’. The Greek king was evidently so impressed with the Irishman that he had a statute erected in his honour in Athens, and he also presented him with a gold goblet and vaulting pole.
A year later, Sheridan would go on to win the National Amateur Athletic Union discus championship and the Canadian championship.
By 1908, he was reaching the zenith of his athletic career, winning the Metropolitan, National and Canadian championships.
At the 1908 Olympics in London, a sizeable Irish crowd had travelled over to support their homegrown hero.
He would win two more gold medals in the discus throw and a bronze in the standing long jump, but it was an off-track moment that caused controversy.
At the opening ceremony of the Games, there was another flouting of protocol, though not on Sheridan’s part.
AMERICAN flag-bearer Ralph Rose refused to dip the flag, as is custom, to King Edward VII. There were already tensions between the US and Britain, leading some to dub the 1908 Olympics as ‘the battle of Shepherd’s Bush’.
At the time, Sheridan was vocal in his hearty support of Rose’s act of rebellion, telling reporters that ‘this flag dips to no earthly king’. It was a statement interpreted as typical of both Irish and American citizens who defied the British monarchy.
Sheridan returned home to Ireland right after the Games, where he was given a hero’s welcome.
He gave exhibitions at Dundalk, Dungarvan, Dublin and Ballina. He competed at the Ballina athletic sports event, breaking the British record for the pole jump.
At a banquet in the Imperial Hotel, he was presented with a vaulting pole by his cousin, PJ Clarke. ‘Greece had her Seander, Rome her Spartacus, and Scotland her Wallace, but it remained for Ireland to turn out the best athlete of them all,’ was the breathless eulogy delivered by the ‘priest and people’ of Bohola.
Sheridan’s last American championship appearance was in 1911 when he won the discus title for the fourth time.
His discus record has since been beaten, but few athletes have managed his run of success in a variety of fields.
After a while, he began to withdraw from athletics to concentrate on police work.
In 1918, Sheridan was asked to work a double shift at his NYPD bureau, as a friend had called in sick. While on the beat, he contracted pneumonia, and died, 100 years ago this week.
To ensure his name would live on, the NYPD established the Martin J Sheridan Award for Valour, to be given each year to a member of the Police Department for bravery above and beyond the call of duty.
A further honour came in 1988, when he was inducted into the National Track & Field Hall of Fame in Indianapolis. He was the first, and so far only, Irishman in history to be included there, joining the illustrious company of the likes of Wilma Rudolph, Jim Thorpe and Jesse Owens.