A SEARCH FOR footage of Irish athletes filmed for Adolf Hitler just prior to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin has begun.
Speaking to RTÉ Radio 1′s Morning Ireland show, Brian Walsh, curator of the County Museum in Dundalk, said:
“We’re organising an exhibition on the Olympics later this year and during the course of a conversation with Maurice Coyle – whose father represented Ireland in the 1948 Olympics in London – he made reference to the film footage.
“[The footage] was apparently ordered by Hitler because there was great success for Irish and Irish-American athletes, particularly in the hammer throw, from the inception of the Olympics in 1896 up to 1932.”
He continued:
“Hitler was interested in success, as all avid followers of sport are, so they wanted to see what their secret was – whether it was technique, DNA or training regimes.”
He added that German filmmakers travelled to Ireland for “research purposes” and said that the famous Irish athlete Pat O’Callaghan had his tendons x-rayed and filmed.
He said he was “working under the assumption” that the Irish athletes were aware of the filmmaking, but he was by no means certain that this was the case.
