Martin Egan won thirty national athletics titles across his career and was one of the finest distance runners in Ireland in the 1940s. On 4 August 1946 he broke a 59-year-old Irish record for the four miles, running 19:38.6 at the Irish Athletics Championships in Dundalk to take more than five seconds off Tommy Conneff's mark that had stood since 1887.
Selected to compete in the cross country event at the 1948 London Olympic Games as a member of the NACA athletics body, he chose not to take part when it became clear that Irish Olympic participation at those Games was organised through the rival AAUE governing body - a decision rooted in loyalty to his own organisation during a bitter split in Irish athletics that lasted more than a decade.
He came from a remarkable athletics family: in a single weekend in 1945, Martin, his brothers Jack and Michael and his sister Angela won nine All-Ireland Championship medals between them. Born in Shanaglish, near Gort, County Galway, he later farmed the land at Shanaglish for the rest of his life and was named Galway County Sports Star in 1976. A memorial race, the Martin Egan 10km at Beagh, is held in his honour.
Athletics
