From his vantage point in lane three, Bob Tisdall could see his good friend, sometime training partner and reigning Olympic champion Lord David Burghley up ahead in four.

Beyond him, lay the world record holder Morgan Taylor and another highly-touted American Glenn Hardin. These were some of the most experienced hurdlers in history, and here on 1 August, 1932, Tisdall was about to race this event for the seventh time in his life.

Off to his left in the infield, Dr Pat O'Callaghan was toiling away in the Californian heat, ruing his poor choice of footwear. Unaware that the surface of the throwing circle was hard cinder, he'd worn boots with steel spikes more suited to grass or clay.

At the conclusion of the hammer qualifying, he stood second behind Finland's Ville Porhola but felt he'd been lucky enough just to make the final.

The spikes were causing such havoc with the crucial third turn of his throwing motion that he had to borrow a hacksaw and a file from a groundskeeper to try to effect emergency repairs.

His quest to regain his Olympic crown had come down to that.

On the third day of the 10th Olympiad, two Irishmen from very different backgrounds shouldered the hopes of a fledgling nation in a vast arena where the presence of 60,000 people still meant huge portions of the stands were vacant for much of that particular Monday afternoon. They had reached this point in their careers by very different paths but would end up collaborating on the most successful hour in Irish sporting history.

Following his victory in Amsterdam four years earlier, O'Callaghan, the son of a farmer from the north Cork townland of Derrygallon, had established himself as the finest Irish athlete of his generation. At the 1930 National Championships, he'd won the hammer, the shot put, the discus, the highjump, the 56lb over-the-bar throw, and the 56lbs without-follow. More than once, he'd come within an inch or two of breaking the world high jump record, and had travelled as far as Sweden to meet and inevitably beat his old rival Ossian Skjold in an international hammer invitational.

Yet, there had been a slight doubt cast on O'Callaghan's presence in Los Angeles. By that point in his professional career, he was working at Clonmel Mental Hospital, and the Mental Hospitals' Committee initially requested he pay for his own replacement for the duration of his absence.

The authorities eventually saw sense and with three-months leave granted, he decamped to Ballybunion in Kerry where General Eoin O'Duffy, president of the National Athletic and Cycling Association of Ireland, had assembled the Irish squad for collective training before departure.

Robert Morton Newburgh Tisdall arrived at the Kerry camp by a more circuitous route. Born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), raised in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, and mostly educated in Britain, he was probably best known for once winning four out of eight events for Cambridge University in the intervarsity clash with Oxford. In the spring of 1932, he wrote to O'Duffy requesting a chance to make the Olympic team, then quit his job in London and went to live in a converted railway carriage in a Sussex orchard in order to train full time.

That was enough to get him a ticket on the SS Baltic that left Cobh ferrying O'Callaghan, the steeplechaser Michael "Sonnie" Murphy, triple jumper Eamonn Fitzgerald, and a quartet of boxers to New York on the first leg of their 6,000 mile odyssey. Fitzgerald came within a couple of inches of snagging bronze and Murphy suffered such a severe bout of dehydration he had to recuperate in America for nearly six months. Two great athletes, they would be consigned to the footnotes of history by the achievements of their own teammates.

The trip took so much out of Tisdall that he was in bed for most of every day after arriving in the Olympic village and barely ran at all before his first heat. His implacable exterior started to show a few cracks in the tunnel prior to the final. An attack of nerves was exacerbated by the loss of his number. Crisis averted and with the 253 firmly pinned to his vest, he set off in pursuit of Johan Kjell Areskourg, the Swede taking full advantage of his inside lane to build an early lead. With no sign of Burghley or Taylor, Tisdall closed the gap until taking control in the final turn. By then, there were fully five yards separating him from Hardin, his nearest challenger, and victory appeared a formality as he approached the final hurdle.

"At that moment I experienced a strange feeling of loneliness, " said Tisdall. "I began to wonder if the rest of the field had fallen over. I knew I was well in the lead and expected to clear it easily but my eyes watered up and I missed it."

Maybe it was the size of the lead. Perhaps it was the enormity of the occasion finally hitting home.

Whatever happened, his lead left leg caromed into the final obstacle, knocking it over and thieving all rhythm from his stride. He stumbled over the finish line with Hardin having closed the gap to just two feet. He'd held on for victory but the IOC wouldn't recognise his new world record time of 51.7 seconds because of the knocked hurdle. Tisdall took gold yet bizarrely Hardin the silver medalist was credited with a new world record of 51.8.

Somewhere in the aftermath of his own glorious run, Tisdall learned about the difficulties facing O'Callaghan in the field. He sought out his colleague and went to work with the hacksaw and the file on the spikes which had been holding the Cork man back.

"We held up the whole Olympic Games, " said Tisdall, "while we filed Pat's spikes down."

Porhola had capitalised fully on the champion's troubles and still held the lead when O'Callaghan came to the circle for his final throw, his vest tucked so far into his shorts that his number was half-hidden.

"His jaw was set grimly, " wrote Arthur Daley in the New York Times. "His infectious Irish smile was gone. As he grasped the handle of the hammer, the crowd burst out with a roar of applause.

Firmly, the big Celt clasped the wire, planted his feet steadily and started to spin the hammer over his head.

"Seven times, it swung around. Faster and faster the ball flew until it resembled a golden blur in the bright sunlight. Panther-like, O'Callaghan danced around the circle and the hammer flew away from his hand as though shot from a catapult. With a dull thud, it dropped into the turf, the handle quivering from the shock.

"There was no need to measure that toss. Thunderous acclaim welled up from the crowd. The steel tape revealed that the throw was 176 feet, 11 and-a-half inches."

With his title on the line, O'Callaghan had outstripped the Finn's best mark by over five feet and taken Ireland's second gold of the afternoon. The clock had not yet ticked past four.