Tommy Hayden became one of the first two Irish weightlifters to compete at the Olympic Games when he finished 22nd in the lightweight category at the 1960 Rome Olympic Games, performing close to his personal best and achieving his best-ever lift in the snatch category – a deeply satisfying moment for an athlete who had started his competitive career by imitating the techniques of Russian world champion Yury Vlasov from a loop film procured by a Hercules Club member.

Hayden was introduced to weightlifting when he started work at Odlum’s Mill in Ringsend, Dublin in 1945, where his enormous natural strength – demonstrated by lifting 56-pound block weights on the factory floor and outlifting all his workmates – was spotted by shift foremen Paddy Kelly and Dermot Nooney, members of the Hercules Club who encouraged him to join.

His February 1946 initiation to the Hercules Club was an immediate success and he won several Irish lightweight championship titles through pure dedication and a punishing twice-daily training programme regulated by his shift work. In Rome, competing in the enormous dome-shaped arena for the first time, he and fellow pioneer Sammy Dalzell competed without any managerial or coaching support.