Former Olympic champion Ronnie Delaney has unveiled a life-size bronze statue of fellow Olympian Paddy Ryan in Ryan's native village of Pallasgreen, Co Limerick. Karl Hanlon reports.
Ryan, who was born in Pallasgreen in 1883, won Olympic gold in the hammer-throwing competition in the Antwerp games in 1920.
He emigrated to the US in 1910 and joined the Irish-American Athletics Club.
He eventually won his Olympic gold with his adopted country.
In 1913, he set a world record in the US with a throw of 189 feet 6½ inches, which remained a world record for more than 25 years.
Delaney, who won a gold medal in the mile at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, unveiled the statue at a special ceremony in Pallasgreen on Saturday.
The bronze figure, which depicts Ryan throwing the hammer, stands two metres high on the main Limerick-to- Tipperary road.
Sections of the stone used in the base of the memorial site were obtained from Ryan's birthplace at Bunavie.
Among the 200 people at the ceremony were four of the Olympic champion's daughters and the former Irish hammer and shot-putt champion, Seán Egan.
The Paddy Ryan Memorial Committee, which organised the unveiling of the statue, also produced a commemorative booklet detailing the hammer thrower's journey from Co Limerick to the US and to the Olympic stage.
Ryan returned from New York to his native Pallasgreen in 1924, where he lived on the family farm until his death in 1964.