James Connolly was a great storyteller. He authored 25 novels and 200 short stories. Joseph Conrad, author of The Heart of Darkness, referred to him as “America’s best writer of sea stories.”  T.S. Eliot and Theodore Roosevelt also expressed admiration for his writing.  

But the story of Connolly’s life may be as fantastic as any that he ever told.

He was one of 12 children born to poor Irish immigrants in South Boston. His parents named him Séamus Brendàn Ó Conghaile. His start in life was not overflowing with promise; fast-forwarding 27 years, James Connolly is penniless. 

But he was a gifted athlete and a person of fierce determination. 

Connolly developed his prowess as an athlete in the streets and in vacant lots where he joined other young men in running, jumping and playing ball. He did not finish high school but was sufficiently self-tutored that he won a Harvard scholarship to study the classics. 

While a freshman at Harvard, he possessed a strong desire to participate in the first of the modern Olympiads. A Dominican priest, Father Henri Didion, coined what eventually became the Olympic motto: “Swifter, Higher, Stronger” (Citius, Altius, Fortius). This spirit very much appealed to the young Connolly.

He approached the dean and requested permission to go to Athens, where the Games were being held. The dean refused the request, and Connolly, though one of the few Catholics attending Harvard at the time, followed his heart. Little could he have imagined the series of distressing incidents that awaited him.

Connolly had saved $250, but the German freighter that would take him and nine other American athletes to Greece unexpectedly raised the fare by $75. 

Father O’Callaghan, his parish priest, however, came to the rescue and collected the money from hopeful parishioners.

Connolly planned to spend 12 days in training after arriving in Athens. But Greece operated according to the Julian calendar, which reduced Connolly’s training time to a single day. He was not apprised of this fact until his breakfast on the very day of his event He had but three hours of sleep the previous night and had lost 12 pounds on his 16-day trip of 16,000 miles. 

During his journey to the Olympics, soon after he had arrived in Naples, Italy, he was robbed. The thief, however, made the tactical mistake of stealing from an Olympic-class runner. Connolly caught up with him and regained his wallet. His next challenge was to escape the clutches of the police, who wanted him to stay in Naples and prosecute the thief. He then had to catch the train that was leaving the station. He accomplished this third “event” (in anticipation to his triple-jump feat) with a flying leap to make the train. This effort was aided and abetted by friends who helped him get through a compartment window.

It was April 6, 1896, the inauguration of the modern Olympic Games. 

The hop, skip and jump (now known as the “triple jump”) was the first medal event on opening day. Connolly’s turn came last. 

The crowd watched breathlessly as he tossed his cap a full yard beyond the previous best performance. He then breathed on his hands (The next day’s newspapers reported that he had uttered a prayer). Spectators shouted out, “It’s a miracle” as they witnessed James Connolly out-jumping the field, producing a triple jump of 13.71 meters (44 feet 11.75 inches), more than a full meter beyond his nearest rival. 

Thus, he became the first medalist of the revised Olympiad and the first such champion since the fourth century, when an Armenian prince by the name of Barastades triumphed in boxing. 

Connolly watched with pride as the American flag was ceremoniously hoisted while a 200-piece band played The Star-Spangled Banner.

Connolly won a silver medal at the Paris Olympiad in 1900, also in the triple jump. He attended the following Olympic Games in St. Louis as a journalist. 

But when he returned from Athens, he was anything but a national hero, though he did receive a hero’s welcome from the Irish community of South Boston. His reception, it is said, made him feel like a king. The dean of Harvard, in an attempt to make amends to a rather hasty decision he had made, offered Connolly an honorary doctorate. This time, it was Connolly who did the refusing.

Back in Boston, Connolly wrote to earn a living and joined the Knights of Columbus as a member of Back Bay Council 331. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, he enlisted with the 9th Massachusetts Infantry and fought at San Juan Hill in Cuba. He published war reports of the episode in The Boston Globe.  

In 1904, he married Elizabeth Hurley, and the two had a daughter, Brenda. During World War I, he covered U-boat action for Collier’s magazine, met Pope Pius X, and later reported on the Irish War of Independence. His writing also appeared in such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s and Columbia. 

The tradition of awarding gold medals to Olympic winners was not inaugurated until the London Olympiad in 1908. 

Connolly’s medal is now housed in the library of Colby College in Maine. A statue of him stands in South Boston, and a street in Munich is named in his honor. His autobiography is entitled, Sea-borne: Thirty Years Avoyaging. 

James Connolly passed away in 1957 at the age of 88 in Brookline, Massachusetts.  

His memory will not fade, especially each Olympiad.