James Beckett captained the Irish water polo team at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games as one of the most distinguished sportsmen of his generation - a man who had won twelve national swimming titles across distances from 100 yards to 880 yards, had been representing Ireland in water polo for twenty-three successive seasons at the time of the Games, and whose sporting range extended to rugby, hockey, athletics and boxing during his years at Trinity College Dublin, where he captained Old Wesley RFC to one of its rare Leinster Senior Cup titles in 1905 and played Leinster interprovincial rugby. A medical graduate of Wesley College and Trinity College Dublin, Beckett was an anaesthetist by profession. He was the uncle of the Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett; his later life was marked by serious illness - diabetes, a muscular and circulatory disease common in the Beckett family, blindness and the loss of both legs - and it has been suggested by biographers that these experiences may have influenced themes of infirmity and limblessness in his nephew's work. Ireland received a walk-over from Austria in the first round before losing 4-2 to Czechoslovakia in the quarter-final on 15 July.
Water Polo
