The American Team

The 1908 London Olympics formed a stage for a clash of empires. In the White City stadium the Edwardian English sporting gentleman met the vigor of the "scientifically trained" Americans - and lost.

Up to that point, the ideal of the British sportsman was of an individual who disdained trainers. The sporting world of Lord Desborough and Theodore Cook was of an age of amateurs who "take off their coats and go in with glorious uncertainty as to who's going to win what."

But the Americans - as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote - "the Americans, they Specialise."

The other issue that added spice to the clash between the Americans and the British was that of Irish Independence. Eire would not be granted political existence until 1922. In 1908 Irish men and women were fighting and even dying for their independence. The 1908 stadium games were remarkable for the number of Irish athletes competing in track and field events.

President Roosevelt's Commissioner to the 1908 Games, James E. Sullivan, "the most influential power" in American athletics, the American Athletic Union bureaucrat who brought his unflagging energy, discipline and attention to detail to US participation in the Olympic Games. In James E.Sullivan, the New World presented a formidable challenge to the British Empire's comfortable assumption that their rules and definitions of sport should rule around the world.

So much has been said about the "failure" of the British athletes that it may be well to point out the price the Americans had to pay for specialising in the stadium events. Their successes were very great, and they thoroughly deserved them; but outside the "track athletics" in the stricter sense, they did very little.

Theodore Cook, International Sport

In 1908 James E.Sullivan and his American Olympic Committee selected the largest US team mustered to date for athletic competition abroad. Of the 122 men (women were excluded from the 1908 US Team), 70% of them would compete in track and field events.

The American athletes won 13 out of a possible 23 gold medals in track and field. And of those 13 victories, 8 were won by members of the Irish American Athletic Club of New York.

35 year old John Flanagan, became a central figure in US dominance in weight events at the turn of the 20th century soon after he emigrated to New York at the age of 24. A stalwart of the Irish American Athletic Club, he was seven times national AAU champion in the hammer throw and the Olympic gold medal winner in the same at Paris in 1900 and St.Louis in 1904.



"A man of god-like beauty then stepped out before the throng, So lithe, so trim and handsome, so sinewy and strong."

Martin Sheridan, star of the Irish American AC and the 27 year old pin-up boy of the Gaelic American, the New York Irish nationalist paper. Emigrating from Ireland at the age of 16, Sheridan went on to become one of the United States top Olympic medal winners, gathering 9 in his life time in a variety of events: discus shot put, standing high jump, standing long jump and stone throw.

"Peerless Mel" Sheppard, the 25 year old from New Jersey who ran both the 800 and 1500 metres for the Irish American AC.








Little Johnny Hayes, the 19 year old marathon runner who took the gold when Dorando Pietri was disqualified, pictured wearing the Olympic uniform of the US 1908 team. He was born in New York but his parents were Irish emigrants.





A non-Irish American gold-medalist. Ray Ewry from Lafayette, Indiana.

Nicknamed "the human frog", Ray Ewry won 10 Olympic gold medals in his lifetime, all for events no longer contested: the standing long jump, standing high jump and standing triple jump. After contracting polio as a child, the doctor gave Ray exercises to strengthen his legs. He practised them so diligently that by the time he grew up he could jump 1.65 meters high from a standing start.