Con Carr, a
sporting hero in my youthful years, passed away last week. I had the pleasure and honour of meeting Con
on several occasions in recent years and each time we promised each other that
we would get together for an interview for a future article. By a strange coincidence I was talking to one
of the surviving members of the Green Star Cycling Club on Sunday afternoon and
on returning home I made a note to phone Con on Monday morning to arrange the
long promised interview. I was not to
know that on that same day the legendary Con Carr had died just a month short
of his 85th birthday.
I was a school boy
when Con was capturing the sporting headlines with his cycling records in the
mid 1950’s. He set the record for the
Cork to Dublin cycle run in 1955, covering the 160 miles in 6 hours 55
minutes. It would remain unbeaten for
almost 40 years. A year later he set
records for the Galway to Dublin and the Limerick to Dublin routes. 1956 was also the year of the Melbourne
Olympics and Con was chosen by the National Cycling Association to represent
Ireland and as such would have been the first Olympian from the County of
Kildare. Sadly, funding was not
available to send him to Melbourne and so Ireland’s greatest cyclist missed out
on the opportunity to represent his country down under.
My youthful
admiration for Con Car, the cyclist, was more than amply deserved and when I
met him for the first time about 10 years ago I found a warm hearted and
considerate man whose success in the sporting world of cycling gave pleasure
and enjoyment to many over the years.
His name will always be associated with long hot summers of the 1950’s
and the sporting headlines of the day which recorded and acknowledged the
talents of the Monasterevin cyclist. Con
Carr was from another parish, indeed from another diocese, but he fulfilled the
criteria for one young Athy lad’s unswerving support and allegiance. He was Ireland’s greatest cyclist and he was
from the County of Kildare.
In the week when
one sporting legend passed from us, a young man, too young to be called a
legend, achieved a level of success never before reached by a Kildare man. Eric Donovan, just 19 years of age, won his
second Irish National Senior Boxing Title in the National Stadium in Dublin on
Friday night last. He was one of three
members of St. Michael’s Boxing Club who boxed their way to Senior National
Titles on the same night. It was an
amazing achievement for a small boxing club and the success of David Oliver
Joyce, his cousin David Joyce and Eric Donovan represents the greatest sporting
story ever to come out of Athy. It is a
story which goes back to 1966 when Fr. Denis Laverty started the Boxing Club in
Athy. Based in St. John’s Hall which had
been built in 1926 as the British Legion Hall, the Club lasted for a few years
but long enough to nurture the talents of one young man. He was Dom O’Rourke, one of four brothers,
all of whom joined the Boxing Club. Fast
forward to 1989 when Dom O’Rourke, Jimmy Walsh and Noel O’Mara revived the
Boxing Club which had faded away in the early 1970’s. Dom O’Rourke has been in charge of St. Michael’s
Boxing Club for the last 16 years and in that time he has overseen the Club’s
phenomenal success. Numerous National
titles at underage and junior level have been won by some of the Club’s boxers
and their success has resulted in St. Michael’s winning the Boxing Club of the
Year award.
Last year the
first ever National Senior Boxing Title came to Athy when Eric Donovan became
the Bantam weight champion of Ireland.
Throughout the history of Irish boxing only three men from the County of
Kildare have won Senior Boxing Titles.
These were Mick Collins and Colm McEvoy of Kilcullen and Tommy Tobin of
Newbridge. Tobin was the last Kildare
man to achieve success at Senior level when winning the National Title in
1985. That same year was born Eric
Donovan who last week became the first County Kildare boxer to win a second
Senior Boxing title. Eric’s unique
boxing success has seen him win ten All Ireland titles to date including every
underage title from 11 years to 18 years.
He is the current National Under 21 champion and has won gold medals in
Finland, at the Four Nations Championship in Cardiff, as well as a host of
medals at other National and International tournaments. Eric who joined St. Michael’s Boxing Club in
1992 won a bronze medal at the Junior European Championship in Liverpool four
years ago and is now a member of the Dublin based High Performance Programme
which is funded by the Sports Council of Ireland. Under the Programme sporting excellence in
young sports people is nurtured and perfected under a regime of training which
permits full time involvement in a chosen sport. For Eric Donovan the aim is to represent
Ireland at the next Olympics and if and when he does he will join the great
pantheon of Irish sports stars such as the late great Con Carr who passed away
just a few days before Eric’s latest success in the National Stadium.
For a young man to
achieve such success so early in life requires dedication and talent. However, the opportunity to realise that
potential must also be there and in that case that opportunity has been ever
present in the guiding hand of St. Michael’s Club trainer and mentor, Dominic
O’Rourke. Dom has achieved great success
with his young boxers over the past 16 years and last weeks tally of three
senior titles for the Athy Club is an achievement unsurpassed in the annals of
Athy’s sporting history.
Earlier this year
the inaugural Osprey Sports Personality Awards for County Kildare were awarded
and they brought together for the first and last time Con Carr, Dominic
O’Rourke and Eric Donovan. Con was
awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award, while Dom O’Rourke received the Mentor
of the Year Award. Young Eric Donovan
was nominated for the Young Sports Personality of the Year Award which however
went to another nominee. At 19 years of
age Eric Donovan has achieved enormous success for one so young and the hope and
expectation is that he will continue in his chosen sport and become in time a
sporting legend to equal my great sporting hero of 50 years ago, Con Carr.
As I left the
National Stadium on Friday night I noticed on a wall plaque the names of those
men who had made possible the opening of the Stadium in 1939. Fr. John McLaughlin’s name figures
prominently and many of you will remember him as senior curate here in Athy in
the 1950’s. For the first time ever, the
Fr. John McLaughlin perpetual trophy presented at the end of the Senior
Championships to the best boxer of the championships, went to a member of St.
Michael’s Boxing Club in Athy. Fr.
McLaughlin would be pleased to see the town he loved so dearly figuring so
prominently in his favourite sport.
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