National Athletic and Cycling Association

The National Athletic and Cycling Association (NACA or N.A. and C.A.), from 1990 the National Athletic and Cycling Association of Ireland (NACAI or NACA(I)) was a federation of sports clubs in the island of Ireland practising athletics or bicycle racing or both. It existed from 1922 to 2000, though for most of the period it was not the sole governing body in Ireland for either sport. Its refusal to recognise the partition of Ireland got it expelled from the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). Clubs formerly in the NACAI are now affiliated to Athletics Ireland or Cycling Ireland, each formed by the merger of the NACAI with rival bodies respectively affiliated to the IAAF and the UCI.

The NACA was formed on 19 July 1922, from a merger of the Irish Amateur Athletic Association or IAAA (including its subsidiary the Cross Country Association of Ireland), the Irish Cycling Association (ICA) and the Athletics Council of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). The GAA was Irish nationalist and mainly rural, while the IAAA and ICA members were mainly unionists, universities, and the urban middle class. The IAAA was linked to the Amateur Athletic Association of England (AAA).

The unionist-dominated Northern Ireland and the nationalist Irish Free State had recently been separated politically, and the GAA was prepared to surrender its authority to ensure national unity in athletics and cycling and avoid a division which would reinforce the reality of partition. The GAA after 1923 thus restricted itself to Gaelic games, ceding athletics and cycling to NACA, with which it remained on friendly terms. John J. Keane, previously Chairman of the GAA Athletic Council, became first NACA President. Whereas the GAA had a ban on members of the RUC and British Army, the NACA narrowly voted not to introduce such a measure.

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