Meet the ex-Olympian who became a consultant at Portiuncula Hospital

There can't be many people who represented Ireland at the Olympic Games and then spent a career working in locations as diverse as Ballinasloe and Baghdad. Yet this is exactly the path followed by Athlone resident Dr Morgan McElligott. A retired hospital consultant who spent over 30 years working at Portiuncula Hospital, Morgan lives in Coosan West with his wife, Rena, whose family were Westmeath landowners for many years. As a consultant physician who specialised in cardiology, he worked at the facility in Ballinasloe from 1956 until 1989 and was instrumental in the establishment of its cardiac care unit. Subsequently he spent a number of years working in the Middle East, in Baghdad and Saudi Arabia, and to this day he continues to campaign for improvements to medical practice. Outside of medicine, Morgan rowed on the All-Ireland team at the 1948 Olympic Games in London and he has been involved for many years with the East Galway Hunt and the County Roscommon Hunt. Now aged 85, he met with the Westmeath Independent this week to discuss some of his many and varied experiences over the years. A native of Dublin, he began his medical study at UCD. While at the university he was a member of its boat club which, in 1947, won the All Ireland Senior Rowing Championship. The victory of the eight-man UCD team at the Irish Championship led to its selection to represent Ireland at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. Looking back on the Games, Morgan recalled a dispute which took place when the Irish team arrived at Wembley Stadium to march in the opening ceremony. As the team took its place it emerged that the parade sign-board, behind which the team was to march, read Eire, not Ireland. Some heated discussion followed, as the team wished to march as 'Ireland', and at one stage it seemed likely that they wouldn't march in the parade after all. However, the team didn't wish to disappoint what Morgan called "the thousands of Irish, or was it Eirish, people in the stands" and so they marched in the opening ceremony as Eire. The team performed well in training for the games but, in their heat, suffered defeat to Canada and Portugal. In a written reflection on the games, Morgan wrote: "The important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part. The essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well." He began his full-time medical career in Dublin, at Jervis Street Hospital, before moving to London in 1950. He had met Rena at the Olympic Games in 1948 and the couple married in 1953. They went on to have four daughters, and have been grandparents for many years. After six years working in England - "where hospital medicine was far in advance of that in Ireland at that time" - Morgan took up a position in 1956 as consultant at the then-new Portiuncula Hospital. He would work at the facility for the next 33 years. Asked for his reflections on his time there, Morgan said the nuns who operated the hospital were "stern" but were "very good managers". He added that the hospital had fewer staff then that it does today, yet it managed to accommodate more patients. "The health service today has deteriorated," he commented. "When I was at Portiuncula we operated 220 beds. I can't tell you how many staff we had then, but it was a small number compared with the present. Today it's 180 beds with about 500 staff. And who's paying for it? You and I. But problems are everywhere." Among his achievements at Portiuncula were helping establish one of the first cardiac care units in Ireland, initiating the European Pacemaker Centre, and staging almost 150 hours of teaching in coronary care for nurses. It was after his retirement from Portiuncula in 1989 that Morgan and his wife moved to Baghdad, where he worked on the development of the Ibn Al Bitar Hospital. The 18 months which the couple spent living in Iraq was shortly before the onset of the Gulf War. Contrary to the turbulent image many of us have of Iraq, Morgan remembers it as a place which offered many attractions. "When I was there I'd start work at 8am and finish around 7 in the evening. Then I'd swim a few lengths in the pool or play a game of tennis. About twice a week, Rena and I would go out to the race course, which was near the city, and take out a couple of horses to exercise them at 6am. "In the evening, after work, now and again we'd stroll across the bridge over the River Tigris, go downtown, along the river and pick a restaurant where we'd go for a bite to eat. And we never looked over our shoulder." However, their departure came when the Gulf War was imminent in 1990. "The Gulf War was threatening. There was talk that it wasn't going to happen, but to us it was quite obvious. We saw the railway with the wagons full of guns, going down towards the Gulf. It was obvious it was going to happen. So we left on the Friday and the first rocket came over on the Monday." After spending some time in Cyprus, he took up another post in the Middle East, at a hospital in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, as Chief of Internal Medicine for the Royal College of Surgeons. He worked in Saudi Arabia for 18 months "until I started to feel I'd done enough, as I was approaching the 70 mark." He and Rena lived in Ballinasloe for many years before moving to their home in Coosan West approximately seven years ago. Over the years he has been heavily involved in the East Galway Hunt, of which he was president, and the County Roscommon Hunt. He operated a number of charity initiatives with both groups, one of which helped generate funds to purchase a C.T. Scanner for the Department of Radiology at Portiuncula. Although spinal injuries have curtailed his horse riding exploits, Morgan remains a very active man, who regularly goes for one kilometre swims at the Athlone Regional Sports Centre.