Did you know Julien Alfred is a daughter of rubby kicking coach guru Dave Alred?
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Irish interest tomorrow
Sunday 4 August
(In order of start time)
GOLF
1017 Menâs singles round 4: Shane Lowry
1128 Menâs singles round 4: Rory McIlroy
ATHLETICS
1045-1141 Womenâs hammer qualifying Group B: Nicola Tuthill
2010-2024 Menâs 1500m semi-finals: Cathal Doyle
SAILING
1100-1156 Menâs dinghy race 7: Finn Lynch
1208-1304 Menâs dinghy race 8: Finn Lynch
1330-1426 Womenâs dinghy race 7:Eve McMahon
1440-1536 Womenâs dinghy race 8: Eve McMahon
CYCLING
1300 Womenâs road race: Megan Armitage
CANOE SLALOM
1430-1510 Menâs kayak cross heat 2: Liam Jegou
1430-1510 Menâs kayak cross heat 7: Noel Hendrick
1545-1625 Womenâs kayak cross heat 8: Madison Corcoran
SWIMMING
1736-1756 Menâs 1500m freestyle final: Daniel Wiffen
Donât think Iâve ever enjoyed an Olympics as Iâm enjoying this one. 10,000m last night, cycling today, the 4 x 400m all unbelievable.
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Bottle the feeling. We might never have it again
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It isnât fair, nonetheless, adeleke does have the strength, she showed it in the Euros. Sheâs pretty clearly been advised by her coaching team in America not to, and it would have been foolhardy to go against it imo.
Shame though.
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Exactly, these are halcyon days.
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The greatest show on earth
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Thereâs the womenâs 4x400m too. Nobody with a genuine individual medal chance was going to run two (2) relay heats too. Thatâs potentially seven (7) races in a week. Had they made the final, she might have been added to the lineup like Bol was.
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Declan Lynch: Watching these triumphant Irish Olympians has been cathâŚ
Today at 17:53
Daniel Wiffen won gold in the menâs 800m freestyle final. Photo: AP
One of the great Irish photographs of our time has Eamonn Coghlan signing autographs in Arnotts, just back from the 1976 Montreal Olympics where he had finished fourth in the 1,500 metres final â also there in the crowd is one Paul Hewson, who a few weeks later will be joining a band and eventually calling himself Bono.
Anyone who is roughly of Bonoâs age will know that Coghlan finishing fourth was an appalling blow to our already-fragile national self-confidence, not because Coghlan was bad, but because he was good â so good, the final was watched on television in Ireland even by people who didnât have a TV, but knew someone who did. It would have been a massive watercooler moment if weâd had watercoolers.
Perhaps the gods put Bono in that picture to tell us that he alone of the Irish still had the confidence to be thinking of world domination at that difficult time â but there are some, I suspect, who never really got over it.
It is hard for anyone who went through such Olympics trauma to assess the galvanising influence of Daniel Wiffen, Mona McSharry, Kellie Harrington or the celebrated scullers who donât seem to regard it as fundamentally abnormal to be winning medals â but the Olympic paradox remains the same, the way we are mesmerised during one of the last great communal festivals of terrestrial TV by things that otherwise have little part in our lives.
Who are these people? Where are they all the time?
I mean, Wiffen is a magnificent man. Yet swimming is so far back in the queue for our sporting attention, to make himself properly known to us he had to become a superstar. He has a charisma that seems at once futuristic and ancient â he resembles some guy who actually invented the internet but who got out early to pursue a more mystical path, while with the glasses he could also have been at Bletchley Park during World War II, spending his days cracking the German codes. And then relaxing in the evenings by cracking more codes.
Meanwhile his twin brother Nathan just casually guided us towards the meaning of life by suggesting that he helps Daniel not to think before a race â because if you donât think, you donât get nervous. So the solution was there all the time for Paddy: just stop thinking.
Indeed one thing the Olympics teaches us is how little we know about a lot of things, but how all that can change in the time it takes Evanne NĂ Chuilinn or Joanne Cantwell and their guests to explain them to us â and then we know everything like how theyâre swimming in âa slow poolâ. Itâs not as deep as the faster pools in Rio and Beijing, but then you all know that.
You hear just the occasional note of unfamiliarity in the way that some RTĂ interviewers express surprise that a rower or a badminton player will be competing so early in the morning â hinting again that breakfast television was never going to happen out there.
Yet they have Timmy âDowntownâ McCarthy, who emerges every four years to do the basketball commentaries so brilliantly youâre always left wondering, âWho is this guy? Where is he all the time?â As such, he is the quintessential TV Olympian, bringing his strange gift out of the obscurity in which it languishes for these brief but precious moments of incandescence. âBoom-shaka-lakaâ, he cries when a shot is most pleasing to him. You donât need to know any more about McCarthy than âBoom-shaka-lakaâ.
Swimming analyst Andrew Bree is another man high on the improbability of it all, eyes wide with elation at the truths that swimming is revealing to him. Pool commentator John Kenny, who in real life presents a Classic Rock radio show, has been buzzing too â but perhaps only Led Zeppelinâs Black Dog can take him to the places that Bree goes when Mona McSharry is going faster and faster in the slow pool.
For this viewer, open to be intoxicated by all sports, some are a bit less âBoom-shaka-lakaâ than others. I have always struggled somewhat with the canoe slalom events and the sailing. The gymnastics lost something for me after RTĂ stopped having Ronan Collins in the commentary box â was it Barcelona? But weâre not going to beat ourselves up over that.
We have too many simpler entertainments such as that super-cool South Korean sharp-shooting lady Kim Yeji or the unfortunate Filipino who executed what is believed to be The Worst Dive of All Time. We have funny tweets such as the one from journalist Joe OâShea who noted that Charlie Haugheyâs grand-niece was swimming successfully for Hong Kong, âbut then he was the master of stroke politicsâ.
The Rugby Sevens? It can seem a bit too easy to score, like a football match with no goalkeepers. But weâre all on board every four years now with badmintonâs Nhat Nguyen, a true sportsman, noble in defeat, performing well enough to keep him going in his lonely battle until the next time.
And while some will complain that the 12 hours daily TV coverage leans more towards quantity than quality, personally I like the quantity too. Though you can start noticing odd things after a while like the somewhat excessive make-up on RTĂâs presenters and panellists. It looks like theyâre all off to a big wedding. And thatâs just the men.
But itâs a free bar too for the viewers if you leave out the byzantine corruption of the boxing and our fighters being cheated. That was happening in Eamonn Coghlanâs time too, but back then he was virtually all we had.
Now Ireland expects another week of incessant TV Olympics with medals already won⌠waiting for Rhasidat Adeleke.
Sometimes the truth is beyond good and bad
The benefits of immigration are keenly felt in our performances at these Games, yet the best way of looking at these things may have emerged last week during a humble vox pop in Wexford town which appeared on Twitter â some local man was asked whether he thinks immigration is a good thing or a bad thing and he said: âItâs not a bad thing or a good thing, itâs just a thing⌠itâs just a thing that happens.â
Let us take a moment to try to absorb the monumental nature of this insight: ânot a bad thingâŚor a good thing⌠just a thing⌠just a thing that happens.â
Every moment of every day it seems we are being presented with something which demands that we declare it instantly good or bad â as a result of which it can be determined whether we ourselves are good or bad. Naturally, this is making everyone lose their minds.
Now on a Wexford street thereâs this stocky-looking bearded chap who in one perfect sentence has said something with the potential to subvert an entire civilisation. âNot a bad thingâŚor a good thingâŚjust a thing.â
Can you even start to get your head around that one? Can you discern within it the path to enlightenment?
Iâd send it to the Wiffen twins, but theyâre probably on to it too.
âGood time to bury bad news about doping
Such was my focus on the Games, for the first time in my life I wasnât paying much attention to the Galway Races â a touch of disenchantment with the racing game in general perhaps, the way the same names keep winning the big races. Nearly as bad as the football, really.
So I wasnât âacrossâ the developing story that Petrol Head, the favourite for the Galway Hurdle, had been withdrawn after our old friend âa prohibited substanceâ had been found in a sample at Bellewstown last month.
And in this case the favourite had been backed down from 16/1 to 5/1 to win at Galway â a massive, massive punt there.
Even catching up with it late, it seemed like a bad thing.
The thing that concerns me is that this may be the first time anyone missed a doping scandal due to watching the Olympics.
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Sarah Keane who is Chief Exec of Swim Ireland and President of Olympic Federation of Ireland is a breath of fresh air and should take plaudits. Sheâs the farthest from certain sports administrators weâve had before. Iâd imagine her influence has been important in how our athletes are looked after. I knew her many moons ago and sheâs a very intelligent and formidable woman.
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True enough. Itâs unfair to compare the euros with the Olympics also.
Also no guarantee theyâd have made the final anyway.
The Trumpian days of Pat Hickey and John Delaney seem like decades ago
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She went for the FAI CEO role when Johnny Hill got it & Daniel McDonnell in todayâs Indo has her on the shortlist for the job this time around.
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Iâd say not for another 4 years at least anywayâŚ
Comes from good West Clare stock
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Is Greg Allen our best caller.
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Its a long way from the ticket scandal in Rio.
We still could and possibly will pick up a few more medals.
A great week down another to go
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Like the Cherry Tree roundabout in 1990.
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