Bob Hilliard was one of the most remarkable figures in the history of Irish Olympic sport, an Irish bantamweight champion whose extraordinary life took him from the boxing rings of Paris to the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. A student at Trinity College Dublin with severe myopia, he overcame his sight impairment to win the Irish bantamweight titles of 1923 and 1924 and at the Dublin University championships of 1924 won both the bantamweight and featherweight titles on the same evening. He competed in the men's bantamweight boxing at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games, losing a second-series bout to Benjamin Pertuzzo of Argentina in what was described as a game display. From Killarney, the son of a prosperous draper and leather merchant, Hilliard entered Trinity College on a Reid scholarship in 1921. He later pursued careers in journalism and advertising in London, was ordained as a Church of Ireland minister, and returned to London where he joined the Communist Party. In December 1936, he departed for Spain to join the International Brigade defending the Spanish Republic and was seriously injured at the Battle of Jarama in February 1937, dying in a Barcelona hospital. He was one of nineteen Irishmen who passed away at Jarama.
Boxing
