John Pius Boland

John Pius Boland ( born September 16, 1870 in Dublin, † March 17, 1958 in Westminster, London) was an Irish lawyer, politician and the first Olympic champion in tennis in Athens in 1896.

Life

John Pius Boland was born in 1870 in Dublin, his father ran a bakery whose products are under the brand name Boland 's Biscuits today known in Ireland. After the early death of his parents, he was brought up by his uncle, a suffragan bishop in Dublin. Boland went to Dublin and Birmingham to school and studied at Oxford and Bonn Jura. 1895/96 he studied at the Rheinische Friedrich- Wilhelms- University Bonn and became a member of the Catholic Student Association KDSt.V. Bavaria Bonn in CV.

Boland traveled from Bonn Munich, Vienna, Graz, Trieste, Patras as a tourist to the Olympic Games of 1896 in Athens. A Greek named Kasdaglis beat Boland before participating in the tennis tournament. Right away Boland won the men's singles and the German Friedrich Adolph Traun also the men's doubles. Boland traveled over Bonn back to England and finished his studies in 1898. In 1900 he was for an Irish constituency MP in the British House of Commons in London. He was a committed supporter of Irish independence and rose to his group of moderate Irish nationalists at the Whip. In the 1918 election, he defeated the opposition candidate of the radical Sinn Féin party.