The Corkman once hailed in the US as ‘the Cajun sportsman of the century’ and described by Eamonn Coghlan as ‘one of the greatest Irish athletes of all time’ was also an inventor, engineer and musician.
Fanahan McSweeney, the ‘amazing character’ who deserves to be recognised for so much more than his ominous sighting before the Munich massacre
In his memoir, Living and Loving with Cancer, published a few months before his death at just 47 in July 1995, McSweeney recalled what would be his brief moment of Olympic fame. “My blood ran cold. I related what I had seen less than 30 minutes earlier. Unknowingly, I was giving the world its first inkling of the terrorist massacre of 14 Israeli athletes.”
“He was one of the greatest Irish athletes of all time,” according to Coghlan, “who simply wasn’t able to fulfil his potential because of injury. He was just a natural born runner and had a tremendous attitude.” He was one of my great mentors and even went as far as building my house when I moved back from AmericaIt was RTÉ’s Brendan O’Reilly, a former athlete himself, who came up with the idea of applying to the US universities for a scholarship. From a shortlist, McSweeney chose McNeese at least partly because he was enthused by head coach Bob Hayes, an Olympic sprint gold medallist.
Summarising, Ray Valdatero said: “The athlete that held college records in South Louisiana from 100 yards to the mile is the unanimous choice for Athlete of the Century, even though McSweeney himself is not a native Cajun.” “He was one of my great mentors and even went as far as building my house when I moved back from America.
The idea of capturing heat from chimneys and recycling it as domestic heating was taken as far as a patent. “Megabucks beckoned,” he wrote, “but Fate had other ideas.”The premise of Living and Loving with Cancer is self-explanatory. In an interview published in these pages in December 1994, Dermot Gilleece describes the book as “an amazing piece of work, beautifully written and vibrant with love, despair, pain and humour, indeed every conceivable emotion”.
It sounds like a grim read but there is such a spirit of hopefulness and a determination to make the best out of what time he has left that it ultimately becomes uplifting.
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