seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Dehydration


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Death of Johnny Hayes, Member of the Irish American Athletic Club

John Joseph Hayes, an American athlete and a member of the Irish American Athletic Club, dies on August 25, 1965, in Englewood, New Jersey. He is the winner of the men’s marathon race at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. His Olympic victory contributes to the early growth of long-distance running and marathoning in the United States.

Born in New York City on April 10, 1886, to a family of Irish emigrants from Nenagh, County Tipperary, Hayes is probably best known for winning the controversial marathon race at the London Olympics. He is one of only three male American athletes to win the Olympic Marathon, the other two being Thomas Hicks in 1904 and  Frank Shorter in 1972.

In 1905, Hayes joins Bloomingdale Brothers as an assistant to the manager of the sporting goods department. At night, he trains on a cinder track on the roof of the Bloomingdale’s building in New York. He is promoted to manager of the department after returning from his Olympic victory.

Hayes starts his athletics career with a fifth-place finish at the 1906 Boston Marathon, running for the St. Bartholemew Athletic Club in a time of 2:55:38. He improves on that the following year by finishing third in Boston with a time of 2:30:38 and winning the inaugural Yonkers Marathon. In 1908, he finishes second, 21 seconds behind Thomas Morrissey in the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:26:04 and thus qualifies for the Olympic Games held in London that same year.

The British Olympic Association wants to start the race in front of Windsor Castle and finish in front of the royal reviewing stand at the White City Stadium. As a result, the distance is 26 miles and 385 yards (42.195 km). It takes until 1921 for the IAAF to codify that distance as the official length of the marathon. Prior to this, races are usually about 25 miles (40 km).

At the race itself, Dorando Pietri from Italy is the first to enter the stadium. But Pietri has depleted himself to open a more than 10 minute lead over the field and is suffering extreme fatigue and dehydration. When he enters the stadium, he takes the wrong path, and when umpires redirect him, he falls down for the first time. He gets up with their help in front of 75,000 spectators.

Pietri falls four more times, and each time, the umpires help him up. He manages to finish the race first, with a time of 2 hours, 54 minutes, 46 seconds. During all these stumbles and the direct aid from the officials, Hayes has now entered the stadium, finishing the race second, with a time of 2 hours, 55 minutes, 18 seconds.

Pietri is disqualified after the U.S. officials file a protest. Despite the official result, Pietri achieves much more fame than Hayes when Queen Alexandra awards him a special silver cup.

All of the Olympic officials are British, and the Pietri incident joins a list of other controversial calls in the 1908 Olympics, prompting the International Olympic Committee to start appointing judges from a wide variety of countries instead of only the host country.

After the dramatic Olympic battle between Pietri and Hayes, public interest is such that a match race is organized by professional promoters in November 1908 at Madison Square Garden. Pietri wins the race by 75 yards. A second match race is held on March 15, 1909, and again Pietri wins. Both Pietri and Hayes turn professional after the Olympics and achieve great fame.

Hayes is a trainer for the U.S. team for the 1912 Summer Olympics. He later teaches physical education and is a food broker. Hayes dies on August 25, 1965, in Englewood, New Jersey.

The Shore Athletic Club of New Jersey (Shore AC) holds the Johnny Hayes collection as lifetime trustees. Included in the collection are numerous trophies, as well as the 1908 Olympic gold medal for the marathon. This represents the first Olympic gold medal to be won at the modern marathon distance of 26 miles, 385 yards.

Hayes is a guest on the television show I’ve Got a Secret as one of five former Olympic champions, which airs on October 13, 1954.

In 2002, three statues honoring Olympic champions with links to Nenagh, Matt McGrath, Johnny Hayes and Bob Tisdall, are unveiled in front of the Nenagh Courthouse.


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Birth of John Treacy, Olympian & Former Athlete

John Treacy, Irish Olympian and former athlete, now a sporting administrator, is born in Villierstown, County Waterford, on June 4, 1957.

Treacy attends St. Anne’s Post-Primary School in Cappoquin, County Waterford, running more than seven miles to school every morning. He graduates from Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1978 and 1979 he wins the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Glasgow, Scotland and Limerick respectively.

Treacy is known as a tenacious runner who does not have an especially sharp final kick in track races. In the 1978 European Athletics Championships in Prague, he places 11th in the fast 10,000-metre race and fourth in the slow and tactical 5,000-metre race, losing to Italy‘s Venanzio Ortis by just three tenths of a second. In the 5,000-metre final, he lingers behind Great Britain‘s Nick Rose on the final back straight just after Rose drops from the lead group.

In the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Treacy collapses in his 10,000-metre heat with only 200 metres left, a victim of heat paralysis and dehydration. Because he was running in fourth place when he collapses and because only the top four runners qualify directly for the final from the three heats, his collapse allows Finnish four-time Olympic champion Lasse Virén, who had been trailing him, to qualify directly for the final. Having recovered from his heat-induced collapse, Treacy places seventh in the 5,000-metre final of those Olympics.

In the 1983 World Championships in Athletics in Helsinki, Finland, Treacy is eliminated in the 10,000-metre heats.

In the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, Treacy places ninth in the 10,000-metre final before crowning his athletics career with a silver medal in the men’s marathon. Winner Carlos Lopes of Portugal is largely unchallenged for much of the race, with Treacy down the field until entering the top six around the 20-kilometre mark. He continues to work his way up the rankings until entering Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum just behind second-place English athlete Charlie Spedding. He overtakes Spedding with 150m to go, during which the Irish television commentary of Jimmy Magee lists the previous Irish Olympic medal winners up to that time, before culminating, “And for the 13th time, an Olympic medal goes to John Treacy from Villierstown in Waterford, the little man with the big heart.” His silver medal places Ireland 33rd on the medals table.

After the Los Angeles Olympics, Treacy runs competitively until 1995, retiring following a road race held in his honour in Waterford, attended by the other two medalists from the 1984 Olympic marathon, Carlos Lopes and Charlie Spedding. While he does not win any more major international championships medals, he does win the 1992 Los Angeles Marathon. At the 1986 European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart, he places sixth in the 10,000-metre race. In the 1987 World Championships in Athletics in Rome, he places twenty-sixth in the 10,000-metre race and thirteenth in the 5,000-metre final. He fails to finish the marathon at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul and places 51st in his final Olympic games, the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona in 1992. He wins the 1993 Dublin Marathon.

Treacy is currently chief executive of Sport Ireland, a statutory authority that oversees, and partly funds, the development of sport within Ireland . He is married to Fionnuala and they have four children: Caoimhe, Deirdre, Sean, and Conor.


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Birth of Charlotte Brontë, Novelist & Poet

charlotte-brontë

Charlotte Brontë, English novelist and poet, is born in Thornton, West Yorkshire, England on April 21, 1816, the third daughter of the Rev. Patrick Brontë, an Irish Anglican clergyman, and his wife Maria. In 1820 her family moves a few miles to the village of Haworth, where her father has been appointed perpetual curate of St. Michael and All Angels’ Church.

In 1824 the four eldest Brontë daughters are enrolled as pupils at the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge. The following year Maria and Elizabeth, the two eldest daughters, become ill, leave the school and ultimately die. Charlotte and sister Emily, understandably, are brought home. Charlotte ultimately uses the school as the basis for Lowood School in Jane Eyre.

In 1826 Patrick Brontë brings home a box of wooden soldiers for son Branwell. Charlotte, Emily, Branwell, and Ann, playing with the soldiers, conceive of and begin to write in great detail about an imaginary world which they call Angria.

In 1831 Charlotte becomes a pupil at the school at Roe Head in Mirfield, but she leaves school the following year to teach her sisters at home. She returns to Roe Head School in 1835 as a governess, leaving in 1838. The following year she accepts a position as governess in the Sidgewick family, but leaves after three months and returns to Haworth. In 1841 she becomes governess in the White family, but leaves, once again, after nine months.

Upon her return to Haworth the three sisters, led by Charlotte, decide to open their own school after the necessary preparations have been completed. In 1842 Charlotte and Emily go to Brussels to complete their studies. After a trip home to Haworth, Charlotte returns alone to Brussels, where she remains until 1844.

Upon her return home the sisters embark upon their project for founding a school, which proves to be an abject failure. Their advertisements do not elicit a single response from the public. The following year Charlotte discovers Emily’s poems and decides to publish a selection of the poems of all three sisters. The poems, written under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, are published in 1846. She also completes The Professor, which is rejected for publication. The following year, however, Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Ann’s Agnes Grey are all published, still under the Bell pseudonyms.

In 1848 Charlotte and Ann visit their publishers in London, and reveal the true identities of the “Bells.” In the same year Branwell Brontë, by now an alcoholic and a drug addict, dies, and Emily dies shortly thereafter. Ann dies the following year.

In 1849 Charlotte, visiting London, begins to move in literary circles, making the acquaintance, for example, of William Makepeace Thackeray. In 1850 she edits her sister’s various works, and meets Elizabeth Gaskell. In 1851 she visits The Great Exhibition in London, and attends a series of lectures given by Thackeray.

The Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, curate of Haworth since 1845, proposes marriage to Charlotte in 1852. Her father objects violently, and Charlotte, who, though she may have pitied him, is not in love with him and refuses the proposal. Nicholls leaves Haworth in the following year, the same in which Charlotte’s Villette is published. By 1854, however, her father’s opposition to the proposed marriage has weakened, and Charlotte and Nicholls become engaged. Nicholls returns as curate at Haworth and they are married, though it seems clear that Charlotte, though she admires him, still does not love him.

Charlotte becomes pregnant soon after her wedding, but her health declines rapidly. She dies at the age of 38, with her unborn child, on March 31, 1855, three weeks before her 39th birthday, at Haworth, West Yorkshire, England. Her death certificate gives the cause of death as tuberculosis, but biographers including Claire Harman suggest that she died from dehydration and malnourishment due to vomiting caused by severe morning sickness.

The Professor is published postumously in 1857, having been written in 1845-1846. In that same year, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë is published.

(Pictured: An idealised posthumous portrait by Duyckinick, 1873, based on a drawing by George Richmond)