The Ulster University community is remembering Dr Maeve Kyle, OBE, Ireland’s first female Olympic track-and-field athlete.
Ulster University awarded Maeve an Honorary Doctorate in 2006, in recognition of her incredible contribution to sport.
She is remembered here by Dr Katie Liston, Senior Lecturer, School of Sport and Exercise Science:
Dr Maeve Ester Enid Kyle, née Shankey, OBE, DUni, 1929-2025
It is with deep sadness that the School of Sport and Exercise Science mourns the death of Dr Maeve Kyle.
Maeve’s life in sport was fulsome and it is entirely fitting that the terms 'pioneer' and 'legend' are reserved for her. Hailing from Kilkenny, and settling in Ballymena, Maeve was a talented multi-sport athlete who competed in tennis, swimming, sailing and cricket.
She is best known for her achievements in athletics and hockey, however, describing hockey as her first love and athletics as the ideal foil to that. First called up to the Irish hockey team, aged 19, she represented Ireland on 58 occasions, including 12 touring caps, one as captain, and a triple crown in 1950. She earned her final international cap aged 39. She played more than 30 consecutive seasons as a hockey player and was inducted into the Irish Hockey Hall of Fame and named twice on World All-Star Hockey teams.
Under the expert guidance of her athletics coach and husband, Sean, Maeve competed in three Olympics (1956, 1960 and 1964). In doing so, she became the first woman to represent Ireland in Olympic track and field. At her peak, she was a top Irish and British runner and made the world ranking list.
Maeve was the first Irish-registered woman to win a British AAA title in 1961. She won bronze in the 1966 European Indoor championships, four gold medals in the W45 category at the 1977 World Masters Athletics Championships and held W40 and W50 Masters records, at various times, in the 100 metres, 400 metres and long jump.
In an athletics career spanning more than 20 years, she wore the Irish vest on 33 occasions and won 42 national titles. She also won 33 Northern Ireland athletics titles. She was inducted into the RTE/Irish Sports Council’s [now Sport Ireland’s] Hall of Fame in 2008.
Together with her husband, Sean, who predeceased her, they left an indelible mark on sport across the island of Ireland through their promotion of good relations in athletics, years of coaching and developing young athletes, and in sports administration. They founded Ballymena and Antrim Athletics Club, which boasted a record of always having athletes selected on Commonwealth Games, Irish and UK representative teams. The club won the UK’s club of the year in 2008. Maeve was a driving force behind the high jump successes of the club, and she mentored and coached numerous athletes well into her 80s.
Maeve won UK Coach of the Year in 1999 and she coached Irish Olympic sprints and relay teams at the 2000 Olympic Games. Maeve was also a former chairperson of Coaching Northern Ireland, and president of both the Northern Ireland Amateur Athletics Association and the Northern Ireland Women’s Amateur Athletics Association. In 2012, she and husband Sean were inducted into the Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council’s Gallery of Sporting Legends.
In a research presentation about Maeve’s life at the Irish Sporting Lives Conference, held at UU in 2022, she was described as ‘passionate, loyal, an infectious personality, someone who made friends easily, a dedicated mother, combative, assertive, a mother figure to her peers, honest, someone who never took no for an answer, and dogged in her promotion of women’s athletics’.
Events such as the Top Ten, Top Town, the renowned Bears club and the Celtic International were held because of the Maeve’s work in athletics.
Maeve was a pioneer in women’s athletics who experienced personal and public struggles as a result of this, all of which she overcame with her customary sharp wit. Her Olympic selection was ground-breaking and pushed against the dominant conservative ethos of the time. Letters decrying Maeve’s selection for the Olympics were published in newspapers. Public disgrace was bestowed on her as an irresponsible young mother: a sports field was no place for a woman, was the claim, and her selection was ‘most unbecoming, unseemly and degrading of womenfolk. It must not be countenanced on any grounds’.
Maeve’s personal correspondence reveals that she considered giving up athletics after the birth of her daughter, Shauna, in 1954. But Maeve also demonstrated immense capacity to take on these conservative social mores. On one occasion, while running on Sunday morning, she was questioned as to what she was doing by a male passer-by. Her skilful response bore all of the attributes described above: ‘the same as you’ she said, ‘just much quicker’.
On behalf of the wider University community, the School of Sport and Exercise Science extends deepest sympathies to daughter Shauna, granddaughter Indy, and the extended Shankey and Kyle families. We also celebrate a sporting life well lived and deeply loved.
