Barney Kieran, the legendary 'Sobraon Boy': from the mean streets to 'Champion of the World'

This article explores the remarkable career of Bernard Bede (Barney) Kieran, known in the Australian sporting press of the time as 'the Sobraon Boy'. He was born in Sydney in 1886, grew up in the mean streets, was imprisoned aboard the industrial training ship Sobraon and, at the zenith of his sensational world record-breaking swimming career, died suddenly on 22 December 1905. He was only nineteen and was mourned by the public as one of Australia's first sporting icons to be cut down tragically in his prime. Incorporated in this study is the forgotten tragic sporting saga of the first great Australian twentieth-century swimming hero and its connotations of muscularly-based youth reclamation. Consideration is given to the social context, the growing popularity of swimming in the early twentieth century, Sydney and the widespread newspaper coverage of his career and death which helped to create the formation of the tragic sporting hero of Australian myth.