Eamonn Fitzgerald was one of the outstanding athletes of the early 1930s, a dual All-Ireland senior football medallist with Kerry who turned to athletics to compete at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games, finishing fourth in the men’s triple jump with a personal best of 15.01 metres (49’3″) – a remarkable achievement delivered through extraordinary determination in the face of a serious ankle injury.

A native of Castlecove, Caherdaniel, County Kerry, Fitzgerald attended St Enda’s College in Rathfarnham as a scholarship student, where his teachers included 1916 leaders Patrick Pearse, Thomas McDonough and Joseph Plunkett; he later became a teacher at the school himself.

He won All-Ireland senior football medals with Kerry in 1930 and 1931 before withdrawing from the Kerry panel in 1932 to concentrate on athletics. An ankle injury sustained at the pre-Games training camp in Ballybunion, County Kerry was aggravated at a stop-over in Denver, Colorado during the transcontinental journey to Los Angeles.

To compete in the final, Fitzgerald relied on pain-killing injections administered throughout the competition by Dr Pat O’Callaghan, who sat in the front row of seats nearest the jump pit. He qualified for the final six and achieved a personal best on the day. In his best jump in the final, an attendant at the landing pit incorrectly flagged a foul when the take-off had not been at fault – a ruling that potentially cost Fitzgerald a silver medal, as he had cleared over 51 feet.

The gold medal was won by Chuhei Nambu of Japan with a world record of 15.57m.