The Last Irish Whale

Recently my Uncle John passed away at the age of 84 in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. John F. Lawlor competed for Ireland in the hammer throw at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, finishing in fourth place overall with a throw of 64.95 metres, just a whisker away from the bronze medal.

No Irishman since him has ever made the Olympic hammer throwing final.

Yet there was a time, and a long time at that, when Irishmen dominated the sport completely. In the first three decades of the twentieth century Ireland produced the greatest hammer throwers in the world. From Paris 1900 to Los Angeles 1932 Irish hammer throwers won seven out of eight Olympic gold medals, as well as two silvers and one bronze. In the 1908 London games Irish athletes made a clean sweep of gold, silver and bronze in the hammer - an accomplishment only ever repeated by the Soviet Union. Limerick man Patrick Ryan set a world record of 57.77m in New York in 1913 which stood for twenty five years.

Olympic champion and world record holder Patrick Ryan

During the same period Irish shot putters and discus throwers won a total of three golds and one silver. In the two games which featured the 56lb weight throw (St. Louis 1904 and Antwerp 1920) Irishmen won a gold, two silvers and a bronze.

However on the record books only one of these men appears under the Irish flag - Dr. Pat O'Callaghan, gold in the hammer throw both in Amsterdam 1928 and Los Angeles 1932. All the others officially represented the United States or Canada. These men were the so called 'Irish Whales'.

Dr. Pat O'Callaghan. Two-time Olympic gold medallist.

In the first two decades of the twentieth century Irish athletes who wished to compete internationally were forced to represent Great Britain. The Irish Free State only came into existence in 1921. Mainly coming from rural Ireland, the Irish Whales all followed the long-established path of emigration by travelling to the United States in search of opportunity. Most of them settled in or around New York, where there was a strong Irish network and athletic tradition. They helped establish the Irish-American Athletic Club and also joined the New York Athletic Club. Many of them became policemen in the NYPD. They took American citizenship as soon as they could, none of them wishing to compete for Great Britain.  

Left to right John Flanagan, Martin Sheridan and Pat McDonald. Between them they won a total of six gold, two silver and one bronze medals at Olympic games.

Yet just how a small and at the time backward country like Ireland could produce such a rake of world class throwers is still something of a mystery. The mix of Celtic and Norman blood certainly produced a breed of big, strong men, and both the hammer throw and shot put descend directly from Celtic games. The original hammer throw involved a long, straight-handled sledge hammer, and the shot put was simply a stone throw.  

The javelin and discus are of classical origin and were both part of the pentathlon in the ancient Greek games. Ireland produced just one outstanding discus thrower - the great Olympian Martin Sheridan from County Mayo, who won gold in St. Louis 1904 and again in London 1908. The Irish Whales seemed to have no interest whatsoever in throwing the javelin (a sport dominated at the time by Scandinavians).

My Uncle John Lawlor came from a modest Dublin home. His father, a police sergeant, died abruptly in 1938 leaving his mother to take care of their five young children. As a young man he played rugby for Clontarf and the Irish Wolfhounds, but it was after he joined his brothers Paddy and Eamon in the Dublin police force that he discovered the hammer. Competing for the Civil Service Athletic Club he won the Irish hammer title in 1955 and soon after was offered an athletic scholarship to Boston University. He was twice NCAA champion and twice an Olympian, in Rome 1960 and again in Tokyo 1964. By that time hammer throwing had become dominated by Eastern European athletes, as the Soviet Bloc countries poured money, resources and chemistry into their athletic programmes.

He graduated and later doctored in geology and had a very successful career in the mining industry. For the rest of his life he mentored and assisted Irish hammer throwers in the States.

John Lawlor, American collegiate champion and two-time Olympian, throwing here for Boston University.

As with the Irish Whales, it was America that made him. America gave him the opportunity and the means to think big, to aim high and to develop his talent beyond the restrictions of a small and still backward Ireland. Though the Whales all competed before he was born and belonged to a world which no longer existed, Uncle John undoubtedly followed in their footsteps and was a bridge between that world of gifted amateurs and the more professional modern era.

Dr. John F. Lawlor was the first, and to date the most successful modern day Irish hammer thrower.