Irish sporting pioneer Kyle dies aged 96

Maeve Kyle passed away at the age of 96 after becoming Ireland’s first female track and field Olympian at the 1956 Summer Games in Melbourne.

Before beginning a successful international athletics career, the Kilkenny native played hockey for Ireland.

After meeting Ballymena man Sean Kyle in 1953, she made the decision to pursue athletics despite still playing hockey.

After their marriage, the athlete gave birth to daughter Shauna in 1954, but the athlete soon returned to the Olympic training.

After winning a 400-meter bronze medal at the 1966 European Indoor Championships in Dortmund, Kyle competed at additional Olympic Games in Rome and Tokyo.

The woman who was born in Kilkenny continued to race into her 40s despite long-ago transitioning to coaching at the Ballymena &amp, Antrim club, which they had established in 1955.

High jumpers Janet Boyle and Sharon McPeake, Mark Forsythe, Mark Kirk, Sean O’Neill, Eddie King, and countless others from the couple’s perspective have all benefitted from their guidance.

Mary Peters, who won the 1972 Olympics, spent her early career coaching international athletes while James McIlroy, Paul Brizzel, John McAdorey, and Anna Boyle both emerged as coaches international athletes well into their 70s.

The Kyles were instrumental in organizing Top Towns meetings, which saw towns from Northern Ireland and even a number of southern border counties compete in team athletics meetings, during the worst period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s.

Maeve was able to manage both the Great Britain and Ireland teams while also leading the Irish relay team at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

In the middle of the 1990s, she was named president of the then Northern Ireland Athletics Federation and was named one of the OBE recipients in the 2008 New Year’s Eve list.

She was also honored in 2008 with the Belfast Telegraph/Sport Northern Ireland Hall of Fame award, and in 2008 she was also inducted into the RTE/Irish Sports Council Hall of Fame. In addition, Ballymena & Antrim was named the UK’s athletics club of the year.