Mark English: Tracing his strong Roscommon connections
Ireland’s Mark English celebrates with his gold medal following his win in the 800m final at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham last month. Pic: INPHO/Morgan Treacy
The village of Knockcroghery was happy to celebrate the recent success of Mark English who won an historic European gold medal in athletics.
Mark made history on August 13th by winning the 800m gold at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham, becoming the first Irish man to win an individual European gold medal.
He also set a European championship record of in the semi-finals. His record time of 1:43.49 smashed Olaf Beyer’s championship record of 1:43.84 which was set all the way back to the 1978 European Athletics Championships in Prague where the East German upset Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe for the title.
Mark’s grandfather Pat English hailed from Knockcroghery and previously represented Roscommon and Connacht on the football field. Pat came from Corbooley. He won two senior county football medals with the great St. Patrick’s team in 1945 and 1946. He went on to play senior football with Roscommon, losing out narrowly in the All-Ireland semi-final in 1953 to Armagh after a replay. His work as a member of An Garda Siochana took him to Letterkenny in County Donegal.
Mark’s father, Joe English, was a regular visitor to Knockcroghery in the 1960s and 1970s where he spent several memorable summer holidays with his first cousin Jim English, a local well known agricultural contractor. Jim’s father was the late Frank English and his mother Delia passed away in 2020 aged 97 years.
Joe recalls playing handball in Knockcroghery handball alley, swimming and fishing in Portrunny on Lough Ree, hunting game, thinning turnips, drawing buckets of water from wells, turning hay, footing turf or simply picking mushrooms in a local field.
In those hazy summer days, many a wafer ice-cream was enjoyed in Gordon’s Post Office in Knockcroghery or bringing groceries back on a bicycle from Murray’s General Store. Happy days were spent walking regularly to Joe’s aunt Peggy (English) Malynn who lived in Culleens and to his aunt Nancy (English) Finneran in Racecourse, both of whom have passed on to their eternal reward.
Mark English was born and raised in Letterkenny and attended secondary school at St Eunan's College. He played underage Gaelic football before switching to athletics during his Transition Year.
He studied medicine at University College Dublin (UCD) and qualified as a doctor in 2019, working through Covid on the wards of Dublin’s Mater hospital before pausing his practice ahead of the Olympic Games in Paris 2024.
