Once an Olympian, always an Olympian – how every Irish athlete in history were connected on one website

Marguerite Dockrell’s Olympic career lasted precisely one minute and 31.6 seconds of an Amsterdam afternoon 98 years ago. She finished third in her heat of the 100m freestyle swimming event at the 1928 games, in the process becoming Ireland’s first ever female Olympic swimmer. She was 16 years old.

Her father George swam for Britain in the 1908 games. After Amsterdam, Marguerite studied in France and then in Trinity. She studied dentistry and later worked as a school dental officer in South Oxfordshire, travelling between schools in a Vauxhall 14 towing a caravan fitted out as a mobile surgery.