Games, which began in April 1908 and lasted for six months, were surrounded by controversy. At the opening ceremony the United States team refused to lower their flag as they passed King Edward, who was in the royal enclosure. Concerns were also raised by Finnish competitors when they were asked to march behind the flag of Tsarist Russia.When the competitions finally got underway, the Americans lodged a series of complaints about the way in which the rules were being interpreted, querying a number of decisions taken by officials.
On 20 July 1908, Paddy Roche competed for Great Britain and Ireland, and wearing his white running vest he took to the track in the White City Stadium for the 100-metre heats. In front of a supportive, noisy crowd, Roche knew what he had to do, and those familiar with his achievements were hoping for great things.
The Cork man was expected to qualify, and with a time of 11.4 seconds he came home first. The next day’s 100-metre semi-final was a much tougher affair, and in fine weather he took his place at the starting line. He was up against two Americans, William Wyman ‘Willie’ May and Lester Stevens, and a South African, Reggie Walker. The race did not go well, and Roche struggled to keep up with his rivals. Walker, the eventual Gold medallist, showed great pace, and in the final forty metres pulled away to win the race pretty comfortably. Roche was pushed into third place by Willie May, which meant that he was out of that particular championship. He had little time to deal with his disappointment and had no opportunity to dwell on what went wrong.
On the same day he took part in the heats of the 200 metres.
Roche knew that only the winners qualify for the next round, so the pressure was on him to perform well. This was his final opportunity to make an impact at the world’s biggest sporting event. He was up against athletes from Holland, Canada and the United States, but he finished strongly, securing a good time of 22.8 seconds. It meant that he could progress to the semi-final, thus keeping his chances of an Olympic medal alive. Four semi-final heats were planned for the following day, with the winner of each heat going through to the 200metre final. Roche was placed in the fourth heat, which included George Hawkins, who was also running for Great Britain. Hawkins was an accomplished athlete, and he got off to a great start. In the final seconds he narrowly beat Paddy Roche, and as Roche crossed the finishing post he fell over. He was down and out, and the fall on the White City track ended any thoughts of an Olympic medal.
Despite the controversy over the opening ceremony and arguments over the interpretation of the rules, the London Games were deemed to be a success. Lessons were learned by the Olympic hierarchy. In future Games standard international rules were applied, and judges and competition officials were appointed from an international pool rather than being appointed from the host nation.
The Olympic experience in London did little to diminish Roche’s desire to run at international level, and he continued to train and take part in competitions, both local and national.
On the last Monday in May in 1909, he returned to Dublin to take part in the Irish Amateur Athletic Association championships, in which he won his third consecutive title as champion in the 100yards event, but he was placed second to William Murray in the 220yard race. In 1910 he was selected to represent Ireland in the annual contest against Scotland at the Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow.
He completed his two specialised disciplines of the 100 yards and 200 yards with mixed results. In the 100-yard event he sneaked home by inches into first place, but in the 220-yards he was pushed into third place, a good four yards behind the runner-up.
He graduated from University College Cork with an engineering degree, after which he applied to join the Indian Civil Service. When the Great War began he served with the Indian Army Reserve of Officers, and also with the 1st King George’s Own Sappers and Miners. He was awarded a Military Cross for showing exceptional courage on active service.
Paddy Roche’s final days were spent in Baghdad, in what was then referred to as Mesopotamia. The city of Baghdad was the headquarters of the Turkish Army, which finally fell to Anglo-Indian troops in March l917. While stationed there Paddy Roche contracted typhoid. The condition proved fatal, and on 25 August 1917 he died.
When the news of his death reached home, it naturally made headlines across the country. The Freeman’s Journal in August 1917 stated that his death would be received with ‘poignant regret’. Irish athletics lost a giant when Paddy Roche died, and it is clear that his passing was felt well beyond the confines of the city of Cork.
It was his running style and easy manner that made Paddy Roche stand out from other athletes. He ran effortlessly, which was a feature that the Cork Weekly Examiner picked up on when it profiled him. The paper’s correspondent wrote:
The strange thing about P.J. Roche was that, in racing parlance, he never ‘sprinted’ – he ‘ran’. He never seemed to be doing his best, so easy did it all come to him. A fall from a horse when a boy left him with a badly damaged left arm, which made him a slow starter in races. Had he been blessed with the full use of this arm in springing off, and had he the full advantage of American training methods, he would have no superior in his time.
In August 1917 Paddy Roche, Ireland’s Olympian, was buried in the Baghdad North Gate War Cemetery, which is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Just over 4,000 casualties of the Great War are commemorated in the cemetery, and there are nearly 3,000 unidentified burials. They include men who died from bullets and shells and from heatstroke and cholera as they battled in the dust to wrest Baghdad from the Ottoman Empire.
Coincidentally, Paddy Roche is not the only Irish athlete to be buried there. Close to his headstone is the grave of William Hedley Craig, who appears in war records as Hedley William Craig, He was a sportsman and a soldier who was killed four months before Paddy Roche died. Craig, like Roche, was a talented athlete who represented Ireland in track events. He was the son of the late Thomas Craig, who lived at Novara House in Bray in County Wicklow, and the late Eliza Craig, who resided in Kenmare, in Orwell Park in County Dublin.Born in Bray on 10 January 1890, his early schooling was at Aravon and St Stephen’s Green schools, and then on to Trinity College in Dublin.
It was at university that Craig excelled at athletics, and he became a leading member of the Dublin University Harriers. His specialism was the 880-yards event. His college performances began to get him noticed and in 1910 , 1911 and 1912 he was placed 2nd in the 880 yard Irish Championships and 3rd in the mile in 1911.
In 1911 he was selected to represent Ireland in the annual match against Scotland in Dublin and he came a respectable 3rd in the 880 yards event. Scotland won the match by 7 wins to Ireland’s 4.
In June 1912 he was selected to run for Dublin University in the inter-varsity championships in Cork.Eight events took place at the newly acquired football grounds of University College Cork at The Mardyke, whose facilities were much admired. The championships should have taken place two days earlier, but constant rain and thunderstorms made the athletic track unusable.
Trinity faced opposition from University College Cork, University College Dublin, and Queen’s University Belfast. The weather was mixed, and began brightly, but by the afternoon the students were subjected to a series of downpours. The band of the Yorkshire Light Infantry entertained the crowd, and their presence caused controversy. Afterwards, some officials from Cork GAA criticised the university for subsidising ‘anti-national games’, and the presence of a military band was also questioned. It was suggested by some GAA officials that ‘there were civilian bands in Cork at least quite as good’.
Away from athletics and his studies, Craig served as the Ireland Secretary for the Boy Scouts Association, and as Superintendent of the Fishamble Street Mission in Dublin. A man of strong faith, it is believed that he was about to undertake a divinity course just before the war broke out, so he may have been considering a future
