Here's Mud in Your Eye (cont.)

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Outside Magazine August 2001

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Here's Mud in Your Eye (cont.)


	Julia Galvin emerges from the murky depths

TORRENTIAL SHOWERS FALL on Sunday, sending water racing down the narrow streets of Llanwrtyd Wells. Just as well: Three years ago the event was canceled because the bog was dry. The competitors have begun to arrive, most of them dismayingly normal-looking. Luckily, the same can't be said for the Irish team. The first to show up—Julia Galvin, 30, a biology teacher from Kerry, and Brian Crossan, 31, a metalwork instructor from Longford—promptly take the town by storm. Within the hour, they are in the pub, leading a multinational team in a pop-music trivia contest.

Not a shy person, Julia bog snorkeled for the first time in the 1999 competition and thereupon declared herself Irish champion, as nobody else from Ireland was present. She became an instant celebrity on national TV and radio and decided to introduce bog snorkeling at home. "We don't have an Olympic-size bog hole in Ireland, so we're lobbying politicians for one," she avers. "And a stadium. We're going to call it the Stadium of Shite."

The Irish are the only participants who have actually held trials for today's finals—in a bog hole in the village of Granard in County Longford. Nine people took part, and by late Sunday evening the fastest four have arrived in Llanwrtyd Wells: Julia, Brian, Dave McCormack, and their champion, John Cantillon. At 41, Cantillon is a quiet, cheerful man who is employed in Dublin as a social worker looking after the welfare of gypsies, nowadays called travelers. In his spare time he is a scuba instructor and plays underwater hockey and underwater rugby—both of which enjoy a degree of popularity in Britain that defies reason.

Cantillon is so serious about his underwater sports that he has brought a monofin, a single blue fin that fits over both feet and resembles a manatee's tail. The legality of the monofin is a tricky issue that hasn't come up before, and Green decides he may have to convene the bog-snorkeling committee—that is, anyone who happens to be in the Neuadd Arms bar—to discuss it.

The next morning at breakfast, Julia spots Cantillon in the Neuadd Arms's tidy dining room. "Deep dark bog! Deep dark bog!" they chant together, in between bites of honeyed toast. "It's our mantra," she explains. Later, Cantillon runs into Gordon Green in the lobby and shows him the monofin.

"I would ban it if I were you," the Irish champion says sportingly. On behalf of the committee, Green gratefully concurs.

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