A plaque at the fifth tee of Ballybunion Golf Club’s Old Course marks two weeks in 1932 when a four-man Irish Olympic track team trained there before the LA Games and forged friendships for life. Bob Tisdall won the 400m hurdles in Los Angeles and, just 10 minutes later, Cork’s Dr Pat O’Callaghan retained the hammer title he had won in Amsterdam but only after his teammate gave him some vital help. O’Callaghan usually competed on grass or clay and arrived with three different lengths of spikes only to discover the throwing circle was cinder. After a poor first throw he ran to the stadium’s tool room to find a saw and file to adjust his footwear. Once Tisdall had won gold and heard of his predicament he came over to help him file off the last three studs and the Kanturk star retained his Olympic title with his final throw. “We sat down and filed his spikes while the whole stadium was watching,” Tisdall revealed many years later. “It was like we were holding up the Olympic Games.”
