30 July 1928: Doctor Pat O’Callaghan won Gold for Ireland at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in the Netherlands on this day. He was the 1st Irishman to win a Gold Medal at the Olympics while representing Ireland under our own flag [Green - White - Orange]. He was not the first Irishman to win one as others had won when competing under the Union Jack when all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom but this was one the Irish could truly claim as their own!

 He was born in Kanturk Co Cork in 1906 and he and indeed his whole family had a keen interest in athletics. At university in Dublin in the mid 1920s  O’Callaghan broadened his sporting experiences by joining the local senior rugby club. In 1926, he returned to his native Duhallow where he set up a training regime in hammer-throwing. Here he fashioned his own hammer by boring a one-inch hole through a 16 lb shot and filling it with the ball-bearing core of a bicycle pedal. He also set up a throwing circle in a nearby field where he trained. In 1927, O’Callaghan returned to Dublin where he won that year's hammer championship with a throw of 43.36 m (142 ft 3 in). In 1928, he retained his national title with a throw of 49.53 m (162 ft 6 in), a win which allowed him to represent Ireland at the forthcoming Olympic Games in Amsterdam.

 In the summer of 1928, the three O’Callaghan brothers paid their own fares when travelling to the Olympic Games in Amsterdam. Pat O’Callaghan finished in sixth place in the preliminary round and started the final with a throw of 47.49 m (155 ft 10 in). This put him in third place behind Ossian Skiöld of Sweden, but ahead of Malcolm Nokes, the favourite from Great Britain. For his second throw, O’Callaghan used the Swede's own hammer and recorded a throw of 51.39 m (168 ft 7 in). This was 10 cm (4 in) more than Skiöld's throw and resulted in a first gold medal for O’Callaghan and for Ireland. The podium presentation was particularly emotional as it was the first time at an Olympic Games that the Irish tricolour was raised and Amhrán na bhFiann was played.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_O%27Callaghan

 Speaking in Kanturk on returning from the ceremony he said:

   ‘I am glad of my Victory, not of the victory itself, but for the fact that the world has been shown that Ireland has a flag, that Ireland has a national anthem, and in fact that we have a nationality’.

 This Day in Irish History by Padraic Coffey

 He continued to actively participate in hammer throwing for Ireland and retained his title at the Games in Los Angeles in 1932 where he was the flagbearer for the Irish Team. In later years he practised as a Doctor his native Cork and only retired in 1984.  He travelled to every Olympic Games up until 1988 and enjoyed fishing and poaching in Clonmel. He died on 1 December 1991.