Olympics 2016

Usain Bolt suffered a grade one hamstring tear at the Jamaican trials last night.

Jerry Kieran called this exactly right and captured the zeitgeist of TFK

**Jerry Kiernan: Olympics mean nothing to golfers

Former Irish Olympian Jerry Kiernan has said there’s “no passion for the Olympic Games among golfers”, and claimed the Zika virus is not a strong enough reason to miss this summer’s Games.

Ireland’s three best medal hopes in the sport - Shane Lowry, Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell - have all pulled out of Rio due to concerns over the virus, airing fears over the health of themselves and their families.

World number one Jason Day added his name to the list of high-profile withdrawals as he cited “concerns about the possible transmission of the Zika virus and the potential risks that it may present to my wife’s future pregnancies and to future members of our family”.

However Kiernan, who represented his country in the men’s marathon at the 1984 Games in LA, said that the main reason the players had pulled out was down to a lack of desire.

“I thought the whole notion of golf in the Olympics was pretty much ridiculous, in the same way I feel tennis shouldn’t be in the Olympics and football shouldn’t be in the Olympics," Kiernan told RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland.

“To go to the Olympics and to do well, you couldn’t wish for anything better.”

"Neymar, Messi and Suarez won’t be participating even though they’re from South America, so golf and the Olympics, it just doesn’t chime.

"I heard Padraig Harrington saying he dreams of playing in the Olympics – now he’s going to get his chance because everyone’s falling by the wayside.

“There is no passion for the Olympic Games among golfers. For the likes of me, the likes of Katie Taylor, the athletes who are going to go there, we dream about going to the Olympics; this was the apotheosis of our particular sport.”

Commenting further on his decision to pull out, Day said: “It’s a little bit different for us because we play week in week out… Golf has never been on anyone’s radar in the Olympics.”

“The World Health Organisation says that Rio is going to be perfectly safe.”

Kiernan claimed the withdrawals essentially boiled down to priorities, with an appearance at a Games being lower down the list of a golfer’s ambitions than many of the other competitors who will travel to Brazil dreaming of a podium finish.

“To go to the Olympics and to do well, you couldn’t wish for anything better,” he added.

"Jason Day touched on it, he was pretty honest actually. He was saying, in a slightly roundabout way, the Olympics mean nothing to golfers.

“If all these golfers really badly wanted to go to the Olympics and of it was the greatest thing they could do in sport, the Zika Virus would be pushed to one side because it really isn’t that big of a deal because there’s no instances, if I recall rightly, of people coming home after the World Cup two years with Zika issues.

"The World Health Organisation says that Rio is going to be perfectly safe. The athletes, the swimmers, the boxers, the rowers and the gymnasts, they have no problems with it at all.

“I suspect that it means far more to them, the Olympic Games, than it does to golfers.”**

Hopefully she will be treated as our greatest Olympic Champion ever should be, by flying her and Eric to Rio business class, courtesy of the taxpayer!

The whole event should be cancelled, it’s a fucking joke. There wouldn’t have been a word about it in the press for the last two months only for the Golfers trying to make up excuses for not going.

1 Like

Fuck sake, delete this immediately before the form gets closed down

It’s surely libellous to call her our greatest Olympic champion ever.

Did anybody give a fuck during that glorious ten or so days back in 96, I and most others left a gig in Connolys of Leap to go across the road and watch her in her final event where bronze was a huge dissapointment.

Plenty of people gave a fuck.

1 Like

I’ll not answer out of respect to rocko.

1 Like

Assuming many of us were no more than teenagers in 96 were there really that many cynics at the time, maybe I was an awful innocent.

You still are.

3 Likes

Ah that’s only likebait, not like you at all. :disappointed:

It would have depended on whether you read at the time.

I used to read the Echo every night, I don’t recall much dissent :unamused: that Janet Evans bitch got properly roasted though :rage:

1 Like

It would also have depended on what you read at the time.

She was no bitch

2 Likes

Janet was a category A bitch actually. She couldn’t accept it when our wee colleen whupped her and all the rest of the ‘elite’, and Mitchie not even having a 50M pool to train in here in the Republic!

but Billy Clinton knew the score :wink:

The lovely seashell is now a pillar of our legal profession.
Go figure.

She worked hard to get on in life, in fairness

That’s the main thing. Integrity is over rated.