Maeve Kyle – triple Olympian, a tribute to “the Irish suffragette of Athletics”

This is a piece by Stuart Weir, quite heartfelt, on one of the immortals of Irish Athletics and Irish sport: Maeve Kyle, who passed away at the wonderful age of 96. What a wonderful life! The interview was done in 2010 when, senior writer for Europe, Stuart Weir, our man around the world met the iconic Irish athlete and trail blazer in women’s sports! 

Maeve Kyle – triple Olympian

The death was recently announced of Maeve Kyle aged 96. She competed in the 1956, 1960 and 1964 Olympics. As track and field is a summer sport, she played field hockey in the winter ginning 58 caps for Ireland. Her friend and Olympic gold medallist Mary Peters paid tribute to her as a “pioneer of women’s sport in both athletics and hockey for Ireland”.

Her best events were 400m and 800m but when she was at her peak, it was thought that women were incapable of running such distances*!  She made her Olympic debut in Melbourne, age 27, in the 100m and 200m and ran the same distances in Rome 1960. By the time was the 1962 European Championships, now 33,  she was allowed to run the longer distances coming sixth in the 400 and setting a national record in the 800. In 1964, the first year that an Olympic women’s 400m was run – aged 35 – she reached the semi-finals in Tokyo of both the 400m and 800m. In 1966 she took the bronze medal in the 400m at the European Indoor Championships. She also competed in two Commonwealth Games including running the 400m in 1970, reaching the final aged 42! She called herself “The Irish suffragette of athletics”.

At the 2010 European Championships I was invited to a function and got into conversation with the lady who turned out to be Maeve Kyle. When she said her name I remember my first words to her where “the famous Maeve Kyle?”. Her reply was “infamous more likely”. After we had chatted for a while I asked if she would be willing to let me record an interview with her. She graciously agreed.

She explained to me the context of her early Olympic career: “In 1956 the only events for women were 100, 200, 80h, javelin, shot and discus, LJ, HJ – so nothing on the track  longer than 200 meters.  This was because men thought that women were not capable of running longer distances and that it wouldn’t be nice if they fell down and had to be resuscitated.  I suspect that events like the hammer, triple jump and pole vault were…