The Corkman once hailed in the US as ‘the Cajun sportsman of the century’

Seán Moran on the remarkable life of Fanahan McSweeney

Listen | 12:07
Fanahan McSweeney held European records at 400m and its imperial equivalent 440 yards, going unbeaten for seven years in one-day international events.

In the run-up to the Paris Olympics, Irish Times sports journalists have looked back at the Irish Olympic stories you didn’t know. This podcast series brings you a selection of those pieces, as read by their authors.

In episode four, Seán Moran tells the story of sprinter Fanahan McSweeney, described by Eamonn Coghlan as ‘one of the greatest Irish athletes of all time’, he was also an inventor, engineer and musician. McSweeney came to prominence during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich with his early sighting of a Palestinian militant who would help carry out the massacre of 14 Israeli athletes.

Listen to Episode 4 here or on your podcast app. You can read all the stories in the series here.