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The Kerry Politician Who Became An Irish Olympic Hero
John Pius Boland
Many years ago, on a glorious Summer afternoon - and I remember that it was much
too beautiful an afternoon to be poring over the dusty, yellowing, brittle pages of a Kerry newspaper for 1900 - I was in the National Library in Dublin - endeavouring in vain to trace some facts about an Edward Barrett of Listowel. I turned over a page, happened to glance at a little story tucked away at the bottom of a column and the words “Olympic Games” caught my eye.

“A Mr. J.P. Boland, barrister-at-law, who practices in London, has been invited by the
Irish Nationalist Party to contest the South Kerry elections. We are informed that Mr. Boland is a native of Dublin and pursued his studies at Oxford University. We are also informed that he is a keen tennis player and represented Ireland successfully at the Olympic Games in Greece some years ago.”

This was worth checking and that evening at home, I went back over the Olympic
records for the first celebration of the games in Athens in 1896. There it was, in black
and white. Mr J.P. Boland had won the tennis singles title at Athens and had shared in
the doubles title. The report, however, claimed that he had represented the United Kingdom.

So began a long search; one that took me back to the National Library many times,
one that brought me into langthy correspondence and lengthy interviews with many
people. It ended over a year later in a room at Leinster House, where I had a long and tremendously interesting talk with Mrs Honour Crowley, Dail Eireann representative from East Kerry. John Pius Boland, Ire;and’s first Olympic champion, who died on March 17, 1955, was her father.

I doubt whether I have research on anyone so much. To the excitement of tracing
Ireland’s first gold medal winner at the Olympic Games was gradually added the satisfaction of tracing an immensely warm and remarkably colourful personality.
And John Pius Boland was, indeed, a remarkable man - in many spheres of life.

Between 1900 and 1918 he was a somewhat dynamic and vigorous parliamentary figure…Whip for the Irish Nationalist Party at Westminster…author and orator…a man
who enjoyed the friendship and respect of Tim Healy, Joe Devlin, Bonar Law, Winston Churchill, Keir Hardie, Joe Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin…a man whose admiration
of Charles Stewart Parnell eventually led to campaign vehemently for the fine monument which now stands in O’ Connell Street, Dublin…an engagingly witty and brilliant conversationalist.

He passed his great talent on to his daughters, Honor and Bridget. Mrs. Crowley
followed her father into the political field, in which she has now become a national figure; Miss Boland achieved fame in the theatre with her memorable play “The Prisoner”.

Regretfully, from my point of view, John Pius Boland was an extremely modest man. Never, in any interview throughout the years, did he speak of his victories at Athens in
the first celebration of the Modern Olympic Games and, in one of his books, “A Day In Parliament”, he dismissed his gold medals with just the one sentence, “I was lucky
enough to win the singles and doubles tennis titles in Greece.”

With little to go on, it took me almost eighteen months to piece together the story of
how John Pius Boland came to be at the Olympic Games at Athens in 1896 and of how
he came to win Ireland’s first Olympic medals.

He first became interested in tennis at Catholic University School, Leeson St, Dublin, where, as he wrote afterwards: “I was fortunate that Father Watters, Father Morrin and Faher Doherty were interested in tennis and they gave me great encouragement.”

From Catholic University School, he moved to London University and then to Christ College, Oxford, where, in the little leisure time he had from study, he continued to play tennis, with an occasional cricket match on the side.

During his years at Oxford, John Pius Boland, as one would have expected of him, became a strong member of the Oxford Union, and in 1894, was responsible for inviting
a young Greek, S Manaos, to speak at one of the Union meetings. As fate would have it, Manoas chose to speak on the revival of the Olympic Games, then being undertaken throughout Europe by Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France.

Whether or not John Pius Boland was inpressed with Manaos or the revival of the
Olympic Games, is something we cannot tell, but, following the meeting, Boland
sought out Manaos and, in the months that followed, they became intimate friends.

So much so that before Manaos returned to Greece in late 1895, he exacted a promise from the young Irishman that he would visit Greece during the Easter holidays of 1896, when the first celebration of the games would be held. John Pius Boland fulfilled that promise and arrived in Athens in March, some weeks before the opening of the Games.

At the time, Boland had no intention of taking part in the Games; he had come as a spectator and that was the role he intended to play. However, following a few friendly games of tennis, Manaos suggested that he should enter for the Games. The young
Greek was then secretary of the Organising Committee and, using his influence, he succeeded in having the entry accepted.

And so, on the morning of Wednesday, March 27, 1896, in a large marquee near the columns of the Temple Of Jupiter, John Pius Boland of Dublin and Ireland took the first
step on the road that was to lead to sporting immortality.

Unfortunately, scant information is available about the tennis contestants in the first Games. The Official Report states that fifteen competitors took part, six of whom were Greeks and that, “Mr. Boland played effortlessly in the preliminary trials on March 27th
and qualified easily for the singles competition three days later. He also qualified for the doubles competition in company with Mr Traun, a German.”

The finals of the first Olympic Tennis Championship took place on Saturday, March
30th, 1896, in a specially-erected hall on the shores of the Illosus, but the Official Report
of the Games had only sentences of description of the finals.

“The gold medal was won by Mr. Boland and Mr. Kasdaglis, a Greek, won the silver medal. Mr Boland and Mr Traun, a German, were victorious in the doubles, Mr Kasdaglis and Mr Petrokokkinos sharing the honour of second prize.”

In the years that followed the first Olympic Games of the modern era, many historians credited John Pius Boland’s victories to Britain. This, however, was corrected after the
First World War and, in the official history of the Olympic Games, edited by Ernest Bland, John Pius Boland is now shown as having represented Ireland.

And rightly so…for throughout his long life, to the day of his death on March 17th, 1955, John Pius Boland, although he lived the greater portion of his life in England, was always deeply and enthusiastically proud of his Irish nationality.