Matt McGrath was born in Nenagh on this day in 1875.
Representing the USA, he won Olympic gold in the hammer-throw in Stockholm in 1912. He also won Silver medals at the 1908 and 1924 games. He would hold numerous world records over the course of his glittering career.
McGrath was one of eleven children born to Jim and Anne McGrath, tenant farmers outside Nenagh. As a child he excelled at sports, particularly track and field. On a trip home from the US in 1936, where he had emigrated at the age of 21, McGrath told The Irish Press newspaper: “What really made me take up athletics in the early days was the inspiration of Tom Kiely and the Davins. They were my incentive to go in for athletics, and whenever I got the chance, I was always practising with the weights.”
McGrath joined the New York police force in 1902 and came to national prominence while representing the force in an athletics league. In 1907, he smashed his own personal best with a world-record hammer throw of 173 feet 7 inches. Numerous American national titles followed.
Recognised as one of the leading athletes of his generation, he was chosen to compete at no fewer than 4 Olympic Games. In 1908, he won a silver medal in London. He returned home to Nenagh to a hero’s welcome; the celebrations lasted two weeks. Interestingly, John Flanagan from Limerick won the gold representing the US and Con Walsh from Macroom won bronze representing Canada. It was the first and only time in the Olympic Games that three men born and reared in Ireland swept all the medals in an event.
At the 1912 games in Sweden, he won gold decisively, his shortest throw being 15 feet longer than the best of any of his competitors. The Olympic record he set that day would last for 24 years. McGrath did not medal at the 1920 games in Antwerp but returned to the podium in Paris in 1924. He won the silver this time round and became, at the age of 48, the oldest athlete to ever win a medal in a track and field event at the Olympics.
McGrath married Loretta Smith, and in 1936 they adopted a Chinese boy, Bobby Lou. Matt McGrath died on 29 January 1941 and is buried in New York. A bronze statue of McGrath (along with statues of Bob Tisdall and Johnny Hayes) was erected outside the Courthouse in Nenagh in 2002.
Sources:
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-20223546.html
https://www.dib.ie/biography/mcgrath-matthew-j-a5684
https://www.tipperaryathletics.com/forms/Phil%20Conway%20Articles/World%27s%20Greatest%20Weight%20Thrower.pdf
