Newry Triathlon Club

History of Newry Triathlon Club
By Tony Bagnall.

The Newry Triathlon Club was once the best club in the nation. From the mid to late eighties right up to the early nineties they were winning across the board. Take for instance the 1989 National series. Martin Patterson was the top man in the league table, beating the likes of national champion Eugene Gilbraith, Dessie McHenry and the famous Ger Hartmann, arguably the best triathlete Ireland ever produced and currently coach to Paula Radcliffe. Tony Bagnall was the leading vet while Newry Triathlon Club won the best male team award.

And individually the border club were winning races all over the place with Kookie O'Hagan, John Browne, Padraig Lynch and Martin Patterson crossing the line first in triathlons the length and breadth of the nation. But back to the start... Triathlon began in the Newry area one wet June night in 1983 when Pauline Lamph of the Newry and Mourne Council brought this new sport to the locality.

Many of the competitors could hardly swim and the assortment of rusty, sit-up-and-beg bikes would have a present day triathlete laughing for a week. And by the way it stated in the rules that each bike must have a BELL or HORN affixed. Anyway in those days the run was first (5.5 miles from the swimming pool up the Camlough Road and round the Derramore Road and back to the pool). Then it was the swim (1000 metres) before a 12-mile cycle to Warrenpoint and back. Lots of competitors travelled from Dublin and far off parts of Ulster. Many of these got lost on the bike leg. John O'Hanlon, a current top man in Masters swimming, was fifth overall and the first local, behind winner Newcastle's Trevor Spiers, Belfast's Gordon Murray, Con O'Callaghan, and Joe Wright.

Others who dipped their toe in this strange sport that night were: Dessie McParland who was sixth, Kookie O'Hagan, sporting long hair down to his waist, Brendan O'Hagan, Newry Triathlon Clubs first chairman, John Browne, who came from Omagh to work in Newry and became one of our biggest triathlon stars (and an extremely popular guy too) and Sean Hughes, the only man who competed that evening and competed since on a regular basis. Some others who lined up that night were: Tony Bagnell, Brendan Campbell (one of the fastest marathon runners from the Newry area: 2.37), Larry Fox, Geoffrey McCracken (World Translant swimming gold medallist and world record-holder), Eddie O'Hagan, Francie Craven and channel conqueror Peter Legge.

After that traithlon the Newry and Mourne Council picked a team to compete in the Ulster Championships at Craigavon and this team was: Brendan Campbell, Tony Bagnall, Peter Legge, Larry Fox and Dessie McParland, the latter who carried in a wee bag on his bike a puncture repair kit plus two big spoons.

The next year triathlon fever really bit deeply and Newry founded a Triathlon Club with Brendan O’Hagan as its first chairman. Also Tony Bagnall became a committee member of the first Ulster Triathlon committee that had Con O’Callaghan as Chairman. And at one of those meeting unbelievably world champion Mark Allen appeared, at the express invitation of Dessie McHenry (once a member of the Newry club) who had the triathlon superstar saying at his Drumbo home. Meanwhile Newry were producing winners: for example in the late eighties Kookie O’Hagan won quite a few races, including victories at Ulster Championship in Warrenpoint, the Tramore Metalman, Ballymena, Dublin City and Rush. A funny incident at Rush. Kookie crossed the finish line - in both directions. He had taken a wrong turn near the end but he still had enough to spare to go back and still win.

Also the talented O’Hagan, who incidentally never trained in swimming and amazingly was never far off the pace in the water, completed the 1987 Hawaiian Ironman, the only Newry person ever to do so, and was once fifth at the Irish half-Ironman Championships in Sligo. By the way Sligo was the big race in the eighties and early nineties, a race that always had fields of over 400.

Tony Bagnall twice won the Irish veterans’ title at Sligo and four times made the top twenty (he could run a wee bit then.) John Brown was another Newry winner, taking first place at the Dublin Airport race in the eighties and he added various other successes including victory in Ballymena. Martin Patterson also won at Ballymena and added a first place the Cuchulainn (Enniskillen) Triathlon for good measure.

For the rest of the Histroy article, please login to see the attachment "History of Newry Triathlon Club".