On this day in 1907, Nenagh’s Olympic Gold medal winner Bob Tisdall was born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He is pictured below at the Olympic Village in Los Angeles in 1932 along with other members of the Irish team (including Clonmel Doctor Pat O''Callaghan).
Tisdall inherited sporting prowess from both of his parents as his father was a champion athlete while his mother was selected to play hockey for Ireland. While attending a Public School in Shrewsbury in England, Tisdall captained the gymnastics team and broke the English record for the 120-yards hurdles. When back in Nenagh, he played rugby for Nenagh Ormond.
Tisdall attended Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge to study agriculture and joined the university’s athletics club while there. He toured North America and South Africa with the Achilles athletics club, an Oxford and Cambridge combine. He achieved national prominence at the intervarsity games against Oxford in March 1931 when, in an unprecedented performance, he won the 120‑yards hurdles, long jump, shot put and the quarter mile.
In the early 1932, Tisdall wrote to Eoin O’ Duffy, President of the Irish Olympic Council, offering to represent Ireland in the 400 metres hurdles in that years Olympic Games due to be held in Los Angeles later that year. Despite an arduous journey to Los Angeles and suffering from an attack of nerves just before the final, Tisdall led all the way to win by a few yards in a world record time of 51.67 seconds in a field that included the gold medalists in the 1924, 1928 and 1936 games. Unfortunately, he was denied the world record as he had knocked over the last hurdle but it was nonetheless a remarkable achievement by the Nenagh man.
Later that same day, Pat O’Callaghan, a doctor in Clonmel, won gold in the hammer-throw making 1st August 1932 the most successful day that Ireland has ever known at the Olympics. And the two men responsible for making it so had strong Tipperary connections.
Tisdall was given a hero’s welcome when he arrived back in Ireland as people lined the streets to celebrate his achievement. 'It filled me', Tisdall wrote years later, 'with a love of Ireland and its people which I still feel.'
Tisdall spent the next twenty years living in Africa but it was a testament to his enduring fondness for his homeland that, while living in Tanzania, he named his house ‘Tipperary’ and his daughter Nena. He made his final visit home in 1997 at the age of 90. In 2002 a bronze statue of Tisdall racing over hurdles was unveiled in front of the courthouse in Nenagh. He passed away in Brisbane, Australia on 27 July 2004, aged 97.
Source: https://www.dib.ie/.../tisdall-robert-morton-newburgh-bob...
