The policemen who met in a unique edition of the Cork-Kerry rivalry, for Olympic glory

This story is part of a series, The Greatest Irish Olympic Stories Never Told, which will run every Saturday in The Irish Times up to the beginning of the 2024 Olympic Games, on Friday, July 26th

That July day dawned sunny and uncomfortably warm in London. Many men in the immense crowd trooping through Shepherd’s Bush towards White City to watch the 1908 Olympics wielded umbrellas above their hats in the quest for shade and blessed relief from the oppressive heat. Others unfurled handkerchiefs and wore them strewn across their faces, fashion be damned.

In a corner of the infield stood a boxing ring, ropes removed, and extra mats placed on the canvas to make it suitable to host the freestyle wrestling competition. There, after hours of sweaty combat, two grapplers stepped forward for the first semi-final in the heavyweight division.

Both men wore the colours of Great Britain and had day jobs patrolling English streets but their exotic accents hinted at the nature of the journeys that had brought them to this curious point in their sporting lives. On one side of the mat stood Ned Barrett from Rahela, near Listowel in Co Kerry.

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From a family of 12 kids, he had worked, upon arrival in London six years earlier, as a wireman in Regent Street before signing up for the City of London Police in 1905. An inch over 6ft, the 31-year-old weighed in a smidgen above 15 stone, could turn his hand to just about any sport, and was eulogised by the Daily Telegraph as “that versatile strong man, of hammer-throwing and shot-putting notoriety”.

Across the mat lurked George Cornelius “Con” O’Kelly, a native of Gloun, just outside Dunmanway, west Cork, where he grew up dabbling in cycling wrestling, and boxing. As the crow flew, less than 80 miles separated the houses that spawned this pair. Yet, O’Kelly’s path to these Games had taken him in his mid-teens to the west end of Hull, a corner of northeast England then thick with Irish expatriates. Joining the local constabulary there on September 18th, 1902, he cut an imposing figure at 6ft 3in and 16 stone, and was quickly seconded to the fire brigade, where, fortuitously enough, one of his new colleagues invited him to a grappling club to work out. And changed the course of his life.

Almost immediately, O’Kelly carved out a reputation with Hull Amateur Wrestling club, causing a minor stir by upsetting the Northern Counties champion in a bout that took less than three minutes. Soon, he won the British amateur heavyweight championship, but his title was wrested from him by Barrett shortly before the 1908 Olympics. Their match spawned a new edition of the age-old Cork versus Kerry rivalry in a sport quaintly described as “catch as catch can”. So when the pair met again later that year on a muggy day in London, aside from tussling for a place in the Olympic final, O’Kelly wanted to prove that, at 22, he was going to be too strong this time for his older compatriot. Of course, he would have known going in that Barrett had the much more impressive résumé.

A sepia print shows Barrett standing in the centre of the London Emmets’ squad that defeated Redmond’s, the representatives of Cork, to win the 1901 All-Ireland hurling final. A canny forward in that game, which was played at Maurice Davin’s field at Carrick-on-Suir in 1903, he arrived at the Olympics five years later listed to compete in the shot putt, discus and javelin, as well as in both the freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling. Not to mention he was a key member of the City of London Police’s crack tug-of-war team hotly favoured to take gold. Imagine somebody arriving in Paris this summer with that many medal chances across so many disciplines. Picture the hype.

That O’Kelly had even reached White City was also remarkable in itself. In the early hours of March 4th that year, Hull fire brigade was battling a fierce blaze at Soulsby’s Saw Mill when a 20ft-tall gable end wall collapsed. Four firemen were buried beneath the bricks of two storeys, and after their colleagues had finally dug them out, the quartet were rushed to hospital. O’Kelly was the worst injured, the damage to his back and shoulders keeping him out of uniform for four weeks and seriously endangering his Olympic prospects. As if.

Each wrestling bout was scheduled to take 15 minutes but O’Kelly only needed a fraction of that time to assert his dominance over his fellow Irishman. He lifted Barrett clean off his feet and then caught him with an arm and crotch hold, ending the contest after just two minutes and 14 seconds and punching his ticket to the Olympic final. The Kerryman gained consolation by defeating Englishman Edward Nixson in the bronze medal match, and though he lost in the first round of Greco-Roman wrestling competition, played his part in the City of London tug-of-war team annexing gold.

“In the shot-putt event Barrett’s first throw was 12.89m (a lifetime best), which was good enough to allow him to finish fifth overall, but he had to withdraw from the competition after another competitor dropped a shot on his ankle before the second round of throws,” wrote Jim Shanahan in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. “He also participated in the freestyle discus and javelin events ... In 1911 he again won the British heavyweight freestyle wrestling title, and at the 1912 Olympics he competed in the Greco-Roman wrestling and also entered the discus, shot-putt and tug-of-war events, but did not compete for some unknown reason.”

Barrett led a full life beyond the sporting arena too. He gained a commendation for courageous conduct for stopping a runaway horse in April 1909, was described in newspaper reports a year later as instructor to the City of London Police Athletic Club, and was a star turn in the sporting exhibitions held as part of the Festival of Empire at the Crystal Palace in 1911. After resigning from the force three years later, he sampled professional wrestling, opened his own gym and was involved with the Hibernian Social and Athletic Club in Chalk Hill. His marriage to Julie McCarthy (a widow with two children) yielded one son, Edmond, and, following his death in 1932, he was buried in Finchley Cemetery. He is and will surely always be the only man to win an All-Ireland medal and an Olympic gold.

Having bested his great rival, O’Kelly could only be denied the heavyweight title by Norway’s Jacob Gunderson, the reigning Scandinavian and American champion. Although it took him more than 13 minutes to win his first bout with the mighty Gunderson, the second clincher was secured in a quarter of that time. With this victory the lad who boasted to people that his childhood nickname was “The clown from Goun” became the first Corkman to win an Olympic gold medal.

Upon returning to Hull he was paraded through the streets of the city aboard a chemical fire engine as he sported a white skull cap decorated with the Union Jack, still wearing the green oakleaf badge presented to him by Queen Alexandra at the medal ceremony in London. Despite lauding him for his victory, the local authorities refused to allow him a leave of absence to try to earn a few bob at professional wrestling, so, in February 1909, he resigned his job and went for it.

Like so many others, O’Kelly found the jump from amateur to paid ranks difficult to negotiate. Incredibly, his first-ever pro bout was for the world heavyweight championship, and though he lost, he appears to have made a good living, supplementing his grappling income with cabaret work in theatres.

Eventually, he moved to Boston, ostensibly to wrestle but ended up spending far more time in the boxing ring. Christened “The Harp” by American scribes, he managed nine wins from 12 fistic bouts, enough to ensure he returned to England a much richer man for the experience. Upon retirement from the ring in 1914, he opened a pub, ran a crockery shop and dabbled in the local property market. He also became heavily involved in the eventful career of his son, Con jnr, who boxed for Britain at the 1924 Olympic Games, fought professionally in Madison Square Garden and later became a Catholic priest.

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For a time in the 1930s, O’Kelly snr returned to Ireland to run a poultry farm at Elm Park near Macroom, and though he was living in Stockport when he died in 1947, he, his wife and children are all buried at St Joseph’s Cemetery in Ballyphehane on the southside of Cork city. In the glory days when he coached young boxers at a specially constructed gym at the back of his house on Freehold Street in Hull, O’Kelly had a simple mantra he repeated often.

“Come on lads, train hard and learn, it’s good for the soul. Use your energy and make yourself into a man!”

The creed he and Barrett appeared to live by.