Maura Barrett dreamt of Olympics glory in Los Angeles 1932 but fate got in the way, writes DICK O’RIORDAN

 

MAURA BARRETT was a young Dublin civil servant and athlete from Drumcondra who had hopes and aspirations of winning a medal at the Los Angeles Olympic Games of 1932.
She was high-spirited and independent by nature and was never afraid to speak her mind.
She was also the fastest woman in Ireland over 100 yards and the national champion for three years out of four.

It was as a newly recruited employee that Maura became interested in athletics and joined the Civil Service sports club, running away with the inaugural 100 yards Irish championships race at Croke Park in July 1929, establishing the Irish record in the process.

Her race times came under the National Athletic and Cycling Association of Ireland (NACAI) rules, the ruling body at that time for sports in Ireland.
Women’s athletics were on the move, literally and metaphorically, in the Free State, a struggling nation in the aftermath of the civil war.
The first all-female sports meeting had taken place in St James’s Park, Dublin, in 1926 with three major events contested – the 100 yards, 220 yards and high jump.

However, Northern Ireland came under Britain’s controlling body and was, in many regards, more advanced in matters relating to female participation in sport.
Maura was tall and of solid build. A photograph of her breaking the tape in Croke Park clearly suggests a powerful talent in the making.
Records show she had won the race the previous year also and was to repeat this twice more. NACAI records show her one-hundred yards record of twelve seconds was not broken until almost fifty years later when the great athlete Michele Walsh lowered it to 11.52 secs.

Maura’s passion for the “100 yards dash” – as it was then popularly known – is still recalled by her family and relations who believe to this day that she had proven her ability as a real contender and deserved to take her place for Ireland in Los Angeles.
But things did not turn out that way. A major shock awaited.

At that time the Vatican was keeping a close eye on the looming crisis of how young women should dress when taking part in sports.
At the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin in June 1932 – just a month before the Olympics began – Catholic clergy indicated their displeasure with the garb generally favoured by female athletes. They considered it immodest and having the potential to be “an occasion of sin”. The garb favoured by women was generally shorts and a light blouse.

This controversy had been smouldering for some time in the women’s athletics movement and Maura waited in vain for an invitation to be part of the Irish team for Los Angeles as was her stated ambition. She was deeply disappointed as she believed her recorded race times were well up to entrant requirements. Maura made her frustration and objections well known, even voicing her opinions at meetings and writing letters to newspapers.

 

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