Jeremiah T. Mahoney

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Jeremiah Titus Mahoney (born June 23, 1878 in New York , † June 15, 1970 in Hollywood , California ) was an American lawyer, judge, local politician and sports official.

Life

Mahoney was a talented high jump athlete in his youth who won the New England and Canada Regional Championships for the New York Athletic Club . He was supposed to take part in the 1906 Olympic Intermediate Games in Athens for the USA , but declined because of his law degree. From 1900 to 1905 he worked for the New York City Council and also studied law at New York University Law School . He was involved with the Democrats and was from 1920 to 1952 a delegate to the respective Democratic National Conventions for New York . From 1925 to 1928 he was a judge on the New York Supreme Court . In 1937 he was the Democratic candidate for New York mayor , but he was defeated by the Republican incumbent Fiorello LaGuardia with 40:60 percent of the vote. He also worked as a lawyer in New York.

After his active career as a high jumper, he stayed at the New York Athletic Club . He was friends with Avery Brundage , who proposed him as his successor as president of the American sports association Amateur Athletic Union . Mahoney was the chairman of the association from 1933 to 1937. Subsequently, he was the chairman of the finance committee of the USOC and provided with great success for the funding of the American teams of the Olympic Games in 1948 , 1952 and 1956 .

Boycott discussion 1935/36

The committed Irish Catholic Mahoney called for a boycott of the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany when the clubs of the DJK Sports Association were banned in Germany in 1935 . He was particularly strong in advocating an Olympic boycott when Jews were excluded from German sport. In his role as president of the AAU (whose signature the entry for the Olympic Games had to have to confirm amateur status ), he was the opponent of Avery Brundage, who definitely wanted to participate in the games. Mahoney lost the decisive vote by just three votes, as Brundage, when he saw that he was going to lose, had the vote postponed and called in other well-meaning delegates (including a German spy ) overnight. The outcome of the dispute did not change the lifelong friendship between Brundage and Mahoney.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stephen Wenn: Death-knell for the Amateur Athletic Union: Avery Brundage, Jeremiah Mahoney, and the 1935 AAU Convention. In: International Journal of the History of Sport . Volume 13, 1996, No. 3, pp. 261-289
  2. ^ Arnd Krüger : United States of America: The Crucial Battle. In: A. Krüger and W. Murray (eds.): The Nazi Olympics. Sport, Politics and Appeasement in the 1930s. University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL 2003, pp. 44-69
  3. ^ Stephen R. Wenn: A House Divided: The US Amateur Sport Establishment and the Issue of Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In: Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. Volume 67, 1996, No. 2, pp. 161-171.
  4. ^ Arnd Krüger : The Olympic Games 1936 and the world opinion. Its importance in foreign policy, with particular reference to the USA. (= Sports Science Work, Volume 7) Bartels & Wernitz, Berlin 1972.
  5. ↑ John A. Lucas: Judge Jeremiah T. Mahoney, the Amateur Athletic Union, and the Olympic Games. In: Journal of Sport History. Volume 35, 2008, No. 3, pp. 503-508. http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH2008/JSH3503/jsh3503n.pdf
personal data
SURNAME Mahoney, Jeremiah T.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mahoney, Jeremiah Titus (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American attorney, judge, local politician, and sports official
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH June 15, 1970
Place of death Hollywood , California