AN APPEAL has been made for rare film footage of Irish hammer-throwers which is believed to have been gathered in Ireland for Adolf Hitler ahead of the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin.
In the 1930s Irish hammer-throwers were excelling at their sport and the fact that Hitler had sent a film crew to Ireland to find out just what made Irish hammer-throwers so good was discovered by Brian Walsh, the curator of the County Museum in Dundalk, Co Louth.
Mr Walsh said that “it appears, Hitler wanted to know why the Irish were so good so he arranged to have the athletes filmed so that their training regime could be analysed.
“We heard about this film in our contact with some of the Olympians’ families and are trying to locate the footage. If anyone could help us with this, it would be fantastic to include in the exhibition.
“We believe this was done before the 1936 Games and there is a suggestion that Hitler’s propaganda film-maker Leni Riefenstahl may have been involved and we are seeking to clarify that,” Mr Walsh added.
Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party, and she was later asked to film the Berlin games for Hitler.
The museum is preparing to hold an exhibition on Irish involvement with the Olympics to coincide with the run-in to London 2012.
One of the families Mr Walsh spoke to was that of Dan Coyle whose son Maurice remembers hearing family stories about German film crews being at training sessions.
Dan Coyle, who was from Dundalk, represented Ireland in the 1948 Games. He passed away in 1972. Maurice said his father’s brother, Ted, was also a keen athlete, and had accompanied his father on all of his training sessions. He wrote to him (Maurice) about the German film crew.
“There could be footage of my father somewhere and we have no other live footage of him at all,” Mr Coyle, who lives in Dundalk, said yesterday.
“The Germans were very interested in the Irish technique,” explained Maurice.
His father’s coach was Dr Pat O’Callaghan who was Ireland’s first gold medallist at the 1928 games where he set world records for the furthest hammer throw.
He didn’t compete in the 1936 Games and it was reported in the 1930s that in their efforts to replicate his success, the Germans had brought Dr O’Callaghan to Hamburg to film his technique; they also X-rayed his shoulders and legs to find out what sort of tendons he had. Now the search for the footage of the Irish athletes is on.
“While we want to find out all we can about Ireland’s associations with the Olympics, it’s already been fascinating going into Louth’s Olympic history,” said Mr Walsh.
The exhibition on the Olympics opens at County Museum, Dundalk, in June. Anyone with information on the German footage or other Olympic memorabilia or anecdotes can contact the museum on email: Olympics@dundalkmuseum.ie; website: dundalkmuseum.ie