Northern Ireland’s total gold medal tally was almost double over the course of an hour on Tuesday evening.
In the history of the Olympic Games, only three athletes from NI had taken to the top step of a podium, joined in one fell swoop by swim stars Daniel Wiffen and Jack McMillan.
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The first three were so long ago that even Wiffen himself didn’t seem sure of who they were.
So here’s a quick guide to NI’s first three golden Games heroes:
Great Britain’s Mary Peters is congratulated on her Olympic Gold Medal win by West Germany’s Heide Rosendhal, who won the Silver Medal.
Lady Mary Peters
One of Northern Ireland’s most famous athletes, Lady Mary Peters was the country’s first ever Olympic gold medallist when she finished top of the podium in the pentathlon at the 1972 Games in Munich with a sensational performance.
Having finished fourth in 1964 and ninth in 1968, Peters arrived in Germany as the Commonwealth champion having won gold in Edinburgh in 1970 and was now considered one of the favourites, but her performance went beyond just good, it was exceptional.
That rang true particularly in her second event, the shot put, where she threw a 16.2m mark to comfortably take top spot and claim a lead she would never relinquish on her way to a stunning success.
Having already finished second in the opening event, the 100m hurdles, Peters would consolidate her lead by winning the high jump with a 1.82m leap, although she would give up ground to local favourite Heide Rosendahl in the long jump, the West German finishing top in the penultimate event and Peters finishing tied for 17th.
However, her lead was big enough that even though Rosendahl also won the final event, the 200m, a sixth-placed finish was good enough for Peters to claim gold by just ten points for a then world record score and write her name into the history books as Northern Ireland’s first Olympic gold medallist.
Her triumph would see her named BBC Sports Personality of the Year for winning Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s only athletics gold medal at that Games and she would add another pentathlon gold at the 1974 Commonwealth Games, too, before retiring from competing.
Jimmy Kirkwood with his medals from the 1988 Olympic Games
Jimmy Kirkwood
Lisburn man Jimmy Kirkwood only went to one Olympic Games and he would come away with a gold medal from Seoul in 1988 as part of the triumphant Great Britain team.
Educated at Friends’ School in his home city, Kirkwood was a prolific winner during his club career, lifting ten Irish Senior Cups with Queen’s University, Belfast YMCA and Lisnagarvey, the latter of whom he won seven-in-a-row with.
On the international stage, he would start his career with Ireland when he made his debut aged just 18 in 1981 and would be part of the squad that went to the 1987 EuroHockey Nations Championship and finished sixth.
However, that same year he would switch allegiances to Great Britain, representing them at the Champions Trophy and then a year later being selected as part of the squad to go to South Korea.
After finishing second behind West Germany in their group, Kirkwood and Great Britain would get revenge in the Final. Sean Kerly’s hat-trick would lead them to a 3-2 victory over Australia in the Semis and they would secure a 3-1 win over the Germans in the Final to claim gold.
Kirkwood would only represent Great Britain once more, at the Champions Trophy that same year, before switching allegiance back to Ireland whom he would play for at the 1990 World Cup, as well as the 1991 and 1995 EuroHockey Nations Championships.
In 2014, he was inducted into the Irish Hockey Association Hall of Fame.
Stephen Martin MBE
Northern Ireland have three Olympic gold medals and two of them came from that 1988 Great Britain men’s hockey team as also in that squad was Bangor’s Stephen Martin.
At club level, Martin represented several clubs, spending time with all of Bangor, Belfast YMCA, Holywood 87, Newry Olympic and Annadale, while at intervarsity level he also led the Ulster Elks to Mauritius Cup success in 1985.
Unlike his 1988 team-mate Kirkwood, Seoul wasn’t Martin’s only Games appearance as he also represented Great Britain at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles where they won bronze, losing to West Germany 1-0 in the Semi-Finals but defeating Australia 3-2 in the bronze medal match.
Martin would gain revenge in ’88 with that Final win over the Germans to claim gold and he would also go on to play in the 1992 Games in Barcelona, only for Germany to once again have the last laugh as they knocked Great Britain out in the group stages.
In an international career split across two nations, Martin would consistently play for Great Britain in Champions Trophy tournaments, winning bronze in 1984 and silver in 1985, while he would captain Ireland on multiple occasions, playing for them in the 1983, 1987 and 1991 EuroHockey Nations Championships and 1990 World Cup.
After his retirement, he would hold many prestigious administrative roles within several bodies, including acting as chef de mission of the Great Britain Olympics team in 2000, 2002 (Winter) and 2004, as well as for Ireland at the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics.
Between 2006 and 2018, Martin held the role of chief executive of Ireland’s Olympic Council, too, having also held roles as performance manager at Sport NI and deputy chief executive of the British Olympic Association.
In 1994, Martin was awarded an MBE for his services to hockey, in 2001 he was given an honorary doctorate from Ulster University and he was inducted into the Irish Hockey Association Hall of Fame in 2011.