Press release.......
Ireland’s ‘Forgotten World Champion’ Runner
to be Honoured with Plaque and Annual 5km Run
He defeated America’s finest athletes at New York’s Madison Square Garden and other venues in the USA, and now Timothy Jerome O’Mahony, aka ‘The Rosscarbery Steam Engine’, is receiving long overdue recognition - more than 110 years later - when a plaque in his honour will be unveiled at his birthplace in the small West Cork town of Rosscarbery on Saturday 1st October 2011.
The unveiling will take place at 3pm that day and will be conducted by guest of honour, legendary sports commentator Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh.
At a time when the GAA was actively involved in track and field sports, T.J. O’Mahony was GAA Irish Champion in the quarter-mile (400 metres) in 1885, 1887 and 1888 and Irish Amateur Athletics Association (IAAA) champion in 1886, before grabbing all the positive headlines as part of the GAA’s ‘Gaelic Invasion’ tour of the USA in 1888, when some of the country’s finest hurlers and track and field athletes were dispatched to promote Gaelic sports in America.
While hurling proved of great curiosity to the Americans on the unique tour by 48 Irish sportsmen, it was O’Mahony’s feats on the track - defeating the best the US could offer - that made the newswires, with gushing headlines like “Unconquerable Steam Engine”. The American athletes were the international benchmark on the track at the time and he beat the USA Champion in some style. This was before the era of the modern Olympics and he was described at the time as the de facto World Champion.
“This is a very appropriate time in our history to honour a great Irish athlete,” said Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh. “In the 1880s, an economically challenging time in Ireland, for ‘The Rosscarbery Steam Engine’ to achieve what he did was remarkable. He is an example to our young people that Irish athletes from even the smallest towns and villages can take on and beat the world’s best.”
The son of a shopkeeper, Timothy Jerome O’Mahony was born at home in Rosscarbery town in 1864 and trained in all weathers in a local field (even after school), with no coaching, his powerful and distinctive rhythmic style of running earning him the moniker ‘The Rosscarbery Steam Engine’. He was also the first Secretary of the local Carbery Rangers GAA club in 1887.
After his feats on the US tour in 1888, over 1,000 people turned out for a celebratory torchlight procession through the small town to give him a rapturous hero’s welcome home after the long boat-trip across the Atlantic. He retired some time later, moving to Dublin where he filed stories as a sports reporter. He died in Dublin in 1914, aged 50.
Some of his times...(Quarter Mile = approx 402 metres)
Times of O’Mahony’s Roll of Honour - Quarter-mile distance wins
All run on natural ground (grass/dirt) and subject to weather conditions, except Madison Square Garden (boards track).
Irish National Titles:
All-Ireland Athletics Championships (G.A.A.), Waterford, 1885: 60 seconds
Irish Amateur Athletics Association Championships, 1886: 53 and 2/5 seconds
All-Ireland Athletics Championships (G.A.A.), Kerry, 1887: 57 seconds
All-Ireland Athletics Championships (G.A.A.), Limerick, 1888: 53 3/5 seconds
Gaelic Invasion tour, USA, 1888
Exhibition run, Manhattan Club Grounds, New York: 56 seconds
Competitive race, Beacon Park, Boston: 54 secs
The American Championship, Manhattan Club Grounds, New York: 52 1/2 seconds
Madison Square Garden, *half-mile* distance race: 2 minutes 3 1/5 seconds,
(Updated 23rd Dec 2011)
Ireland’s forgotten champion: ‘The Rosscarbery Steam Engine’
One of Ireland’s greatest pre-Olypic era athletes is finally being remembered and honoured.
“To the younger generation of athletes the ‘Steam Engine’ is only a name, but to the athlete of a quarter of a century ago the pseudonym calls up visions of exciting finishes and heroic deeds on every track from Dublin to Cape Clear and from New York to San Francisco… his early demise is little less than a national loss.”
- Obituary by ‘Carbery’ [journalist], The Cork Examiner, September 14th, 1914
He defeated America’s finest athletes at New York’s Madison Square Garden and other venues in the USA, and now Timothy Jerome O’Mahony, aka ‘The Rosscarbery Steam Engine’, is receiving long overdue recognition - more than 110 years later - when a plaque in his honour will be unveiled at his birthplace in the small West Cork town of Rosscarbery on Saturday 1st October 2011.
The unveiling will take place at 3pm that day and will be conducted by guest of honour, legendary sports commentator Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh.
At a time when the GAA was actively involved in track and field sports, O’Mahony was GAA Irish Champion in the quarter-mile (400 metres) in 1885, 1887 and 1888 and Irish Amateur Athletics Association (IAAA) champion in 1886, before grabbing all the positive headlines as part of the GAA’s ‘Gaelic Invasion’ tour of the USA in 1888, when the some of the country’s finest hurlers and track and field athletes were dispatched to promote Gaelic sports in America.
While hurling proved of great curiosity to the Americans on the unique tour by 48 Irish sportsmen, it was O’Mahony’s feats on the track - defeating the best the US could offer - that made the newswires, with gushing headlines like “Unconquerable Steam Engine”. The American athletes were the international benchmark on the track at the time and he beat the USA Champion in some style. This was before the era of the modern Olympics and he was described at the time as the de facto World Champion.
The idea for the Gaelic Invasion was came before a meeting of the GAA Central Council at Limerick Junction on July 5th 1888, when a committee was formed with the objective of sending two teams of hurlers and athletes to the USA the following October “to show our exiled countrymen beyond the Atlantic the enormous progress made in reviving the grand old pastimes, and that the ‘Ould Country’, despite the numerous disadvantages under which it labours, can yet produce bone and muscle second to none in the world”. Any surplus raised for the tour or from the events held there would be diverted into reviving the Tailteann Games, “of which our forefathers were so proud”.
Over in the Big Apple, the New York Herald newspaper did its best to convey American enthusiasm for the tour, claiming the US athletes were putting on their best war paint and licking their lips at the thought of encountering the Irish athletes.
While the journey across the Atlantic was jovial and plain sailing, the Gaels were about to walk into the crossfire of an uncivil ‘war’ between the two leading athletics bodies in the US, the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and the National Association of Amateur Athletes of America (NAAA). To their credit, the GAA – not wanting to get involved in the row – stuck to their original agreement with the NAAA despite overtures from the increasingly more powerful AAU. Alas, it was a principled position they took, but one with damaging financial ramifications for the tour and, as a consequence, the hoped for revival of the Tailteann Games back in Ireland.
Nonetheless, the Irish sportsmen were buoyed by the excitement of their arrival in the New World.
The invaders first outing was a ‘warm-up’ exhibition of hurling and athletics contests among themselves in order to run out their sea legs, before approximately 6,000 people at the Manhattan AC grounds. The hurling match was rapturously received and involved some “remarkably brilliant” play, but the athletes were still below par from the journey and even the Irish 440 yards champion, O’Mahony, clocked by his standards a modest 56 seconds.
Boston, though, was to be the first real test for the athletes, with an international contest against “the pick of the New England athletes” and took place at Beacon Park before an enormous attendance.
Previewing the contests, the Boston Sunday Globe said: “T J O’Mahony is another Cork county boy who has shown his heels to Clarence Smith [US half mile champion]. He comes from the land whence came Jeremiah O’Donovan, who adds Rossa to his name to indicate his town. O’Mahony lives at Rosscarbery, county Cork. He defeated Smith for a quarter mile at Limerick in 55 3/5 seconds, but he has done several seconds better on another occasion. It may be added the course at Limerick was heavy and slow.”
According to the Cork Examiner on October 6th, “Ten thousand people paid gate money and five hundred carriages were on the ground.” Our man, TJ O’Mahony, won the quarter mile in 54 seconds and was warming to the task, as were his colleagues: of the ten athletics events, the Gaels won all but two.
After the Boston successes, both hurlers and athletes moved on to give exhibitions in other towns and cities in Massachusetts before heading back to New York’s Manhattan Grounds to make, for October 13th, “a bold bid for American Championship honours”.
Alas, the continual travelling and giving of exhibitions took its toll during the subsequent American Championships, with the Gaels winning just three of the 16 championship events. According to Sport, “The Rosscarbery Steam Engine did, perhaps, the most meritorious performance in beating Moffat, of Toronto, in the quarter mile in a good time of 52 ½ seconds over such a slow, sodden track.”
Indeed, reflecting on this event some weeks later, the Sport correspondent was fulsome on his praise. “Good old TJ O’Mahony,” he wrote, “proved that his title of Steam Engine is fully deserved by beating in hollow fashion a big field of the best quarter mile runners in America… O’Mahony would have beaten this time [52 ½ secs] had he been pressed, and it is generally conceded that over this distance the Rosscarbery man would have had few superiors if he had proper opportunities for training. There is little doubt about it that, properly brought out, the Steam Engine would shake 51 seconds.”
New York’s at Madison Square Garden was the next key venue for the touring athletes. With the covered stadium “lighted with an electric light”, the track “made of boards” and over 3,000 spectators in attendance, the scene was set for some cracking contests and the Gaels were ‘well up for it’ and, it should be noted, the Irish runners in the party had never run on a wooden track before.
While there were 15 separate events (plus heats), the Sport reporter was clear about who stole the show: “The half mile was the surprise of the day, being won by the redoubtable and unconquerable Steam Engine. Thirteen faced the starter, but the following were the only runners of importance – JW Moffat (champion half-miler of America and Canada)…W Phibbs…JC Devereux… and TJ O’Mahony… O’Mahony, who was going splendidly, ran one of the finest races which could be witnessed, and won what looked to be a hopeless race by one of his proverbial rushes. At the second turn for home, which was only about 80 yards from the tape, O’Mahony, who was coming on to win the race nicely, got knocked in on the boards and consequently out of his stride. The Rosscarbery man quickly got back, but the race looked a hopeless one for him; however, by the aid of grim, unflinching determination, and an extraordinary spurt, the Steam Engine managed to catch Devereux and won by half a yard. Time, 2 min 3 1/5 seconds. I need hardly say that the popular O’Mahony got quite an ovation, which he deserved, and the cheering was both long and loud.”
The Gaelic Invaders then moved on for further hurling and short athletics exhibitions in Philadelphia, Brooklyn and Manhattan before returning to the centre of the Big Apple for two days of rest as well as official receptions, before departing again by steam ship to head for home.
Greeted by a large number of townspeople at Queenstown in the early hours, the team’s arrival was a loud and celebratory affair. With “the lion of the returning party, TJ O’Mahony, the Rosscarbery Steam Engine, coming in for more than ordinary congratulations”.
The hurlers made a strong impression in the States, and athletes accredited themselves with some notable achievements, the Rosscarbery man being a standout success: “TJ O’Mahony and TM O’Connor, in addition to Mitchell, won for themselves the proud title of Champion of America,” said the Sport newspaper. “The Steam Engine ran in splendid form throughout the entire tour and it would have required a strong opposition to have beaten him level in the quarter mile or the half [mile]. Though O’Mahony has not gone in to any extent for the half -mile, still I believe if he trained specially for it that he has no superior over the distance in Ireland. His winning the half as Madison Square Garden was a wonderful performance.”
On returning to his west Cork town, O’Mahony was greeted by wild rejoicing and a torchlight procession by over 1,000 people “all anxious to get a glimpse, if not to grasp the hand, of the hero of the hour.”
Of the man himself, we know he was born in 1864 and educated at the local Ardagh Boys’ School. He took up running at an early age and it is said he trained in a local field, about a mile to the west of the town, with great dedication after school was over. He was the first Secretary of the local Carbery Rangers GAA club in 1887 at a time when athletics were very much part of GAA activities. Deciding to break out of his purely local reputation as the best quarter-mile runner in West Cork, O’Mahony, at age 21, entered that distance in the first ever All-Ireland Athletics Championships at Tramore, Co. Waterford, in 1885, which he won in 60 seconds. The following year he won the Irish Amateur Athletics Association (IAAA) quarter-mile in 53 2/5 seconds. In 1887, he was back at the GAA championships, this time in Tralee, Co. Kerry, which he won in 57 seconds. He was close again to his best time the following year in Limerick, with a time of 53 3/5 seconds.
Of course, the variation in some of the times must take account of the fact that these races were run on natural ground and hence were subject to the affects of the weather, the going often ‘heavy’. Neither was there digital timing.
Sadly, despite considerable research no photos can be found of O’Mahony, but he was described by Carbery in the Cork Examiner as “standing some five feet eleven, and weighing around fourteen stone, he always suggested a combination of activity and strength unique in its blending.” His distinctive rhythmic style of running earned him the moniker ‘The Rosscarbery Steam Engine’ with a signature burst of pace in the final straight which blitzed his competitors.
We don’t know what led to his death of cardiac disease and, ultimately, cardiac failure at the age of just 50 at Hendrick Lane, near Smithfield in Dublin. In the same obituary in the Cork Examiner, Carbery added: “A powerful and picturesque personality in the Irish athletics world…his early demise is little less than a national loss.”
That TJ O’Mahony’s grave stone has crumbled to dust in Glasnevin (plot RH272) is to be regretted, but hopefully something can be done to reinstate one reflecting his status.
That he will be remembered in Rosscarbery by the unveiling of a commemorative plaque brings great credit to all involved in renewing a sense of pride in a once-forgotten, but now remembered, and recognised, man who was an inspirational figure and a genuine local and national sporting hero.
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