The Ireland Fund of France is to present Stephen Roche with the Wild Geese Award at its Gala Dinner on Friday 10 February, 2012. 2012 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Stephen Roche’s most remarkable sporting feat. By any standards he was one of the finest cyclists of his generation with 58 career wins, and it was in 1987, that he became only the second person of all time to achieve the Triple Crown of Cycling (considered the greatest achievement in cycling) when he won the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France and the World Road Racing Championship in the same year. The only other person to achieve this distinction was the famous Belgian cyclist, Eddy Merckx, in 1974.
Stephen who was born in Dundrum in Dublin now lives in the South of France.
The Gala Charity Dinner which is known as the Wild Geese Ball (Bal des Oies Sauvages) takes place in Paris every two years on the eve of the France-Ireland rugby international. Like the previous dinner, two years ago, this year’s event will be held at the Pavillon Dauphine at Porte Dauphine
Background Note
The Ireland Fund of France is a humanitarian and cultural association which was founded in 1990 with a view to making Ireland better known in France and to stimulate bilateral relations and to promote events in the two countries in a variety of areas. It is part of the Confederation of Ireland Funds which was founded in 1976 and which is now present in 12 countries. The resources of the Funds come exclusively from private donations by the Irish Diaspora and friends of Ireland and these donations to date have totalled more than $380 million dollars. These funds have been used to finance thousands of projects in the north and south of the island of Ireland in such areas as education, arts, culture and inter-communal reconciliation.
Insofar as the Ireland Fund of France is concerned it now sees its role very much as one of developing links at all levels between France and Ireland. This is done mainly through its support of educational, cultural and humanitarian projects in both countries.
The principal event in the calendar of the Ireland Fund of France (and its major fund raising event) is its gala dinner (Bal des Oies Sauvages) which is held in Paris every two years on the eve of the France-Ireland rugby match.
At the dinner it is usual to have a guest of honour who is presented with the Wild Geese Award. The Wild Geese is the collective name given to the Irish who, in former centuries left their native land and found refuge in France. They and their descendants and those who followed afterwards made many contributions, to public affairs, to the armies of France as well as to the cultural and commercial life of the country. Names such as MacMahon, McCartan (forebears of General de Gaulle), Lynch, Phelan, Barton, Hennessy and, more recently, Wilde, Beckett and Joyce spring to mind.
Over the years the Wild Geese Award has been presented to many distinguished Irish and French recipients in the fields of politics, culture and business. These have included Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland; Pat Cox, President of the European Parliament; Seamus Heaney, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature; John Hume, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize; Patrick Ricard, PDG of Pernod-Ricard and Michel Deon, writer and member of the Academie Francaise.
The Wild Geese Award trophy is a bronze sculpture of a wild goose in flight, 28cm long, 30cm high and 40cm wide. The artist is Tanya Elliott Nyegaard.
