Paris Olympics 2024

[Spidey]

Double extra medium?

[Raylan]

They’re athletic fit

[Arthur]

Wiffster is the well ahead of the second three now among kids because he has a funny name, wears glasses and won a gold medal. A good name is important. They all know Kellie now but wouldn’t know who Harrington is.

[Fitzy]

Kate O’Connor third in the Heptathlon javelin, going great guns. Stunning girl as well.

[Cheasty]

@Arthur

I think as time goes on journalists who didn’t actually play the sport at high level are going to get pushed further to the margins. There’s enough ex athletes/players now who are articulate. It’s even happening a bit with presenters like lineker etc

That isn’t a positive development. There’s a place for somebody like Gillick but you need people to probe and challenge and talk about the real issues that matter in sport. You need people that will talk about the hard stuff. You need people that have distance and that are professional journalists.

Otherwise there’s a risk it becomes a social media love fest.

Jerry Kiernan was great because he didn’t spare feelings.

Kimmage was great because both because he had lived it but much more so because he was willing to challenge and be an awkward, cranky, dogged cunt.

95% of why Eddie Butler was great was he was an incredible broadcaster. The 5% was his playing career.

Some sports have gone pretty much exclusively now towards former players as broadcasters. For athletics the BBC went the road of having Roger Black and then Steve Cram presenting. Black was a cheerleader. Cram is competent especially as a commentator but hardly stellar.

You can be a former player and be a very good broadcaster but it has to be based on merit, not on a jobs for the boys basis.

[Aristotle]

Do you have kids, out of interest?

Maybe it’s different in that I’m coming from a rural area but I do a bit of coaching with kids and, while they are getting excited about the Olympics, the ones I know would be a hundred times more excited to meet David Clifford than either Wiffen or Harrington (I’m discounting Limerick hurlers as there is a natural fondness for your own).

Obviously Harrington being a Dub probably helps in the country’s main population centre.

[Arthur]

Yeah I have kids. Clifford would be famous alright. Id stand by everything else I said though. We have very very few well known sports stars bar gaa players in their own county. This Olympics has created a bit of a buzz hopefully the medallists become stars off the back of it.

[flattythehurdler]

@LionelRitchie

Very physical game. Had the misfortune of playing/attempting it a couple of times and id barely be much more than a competent swimmer. Lot of unseen digging, kicking and fucking scratching of all things going on. Exhausting

It’s brutal. And vicious.

[Cheasty]

@Aristotle

Do you have kids, out of interest?

Maybe it’s different in that I’m coming from a rural area but I do a bit of coaching with kids and, while they are getting excited about the Olympics, the ones I know would be a hundred times more excited to meet David Clifford than either Wiffen or Harrington (I’m discounting Limerick hurlers as there is a natural fondness for your own).

Obviously Harrington being a Dub probably helps in the country’s main population centre.

Swimming doesn’t have a “constituency” in Ireland as such. The swimming community is very small and spread nationally. The people who would recognise Wiffen are general sports followers, really clued in sports followers.

Swimming isn’t a sport in which faces are particularly prominent because you wear hats and goggles and you can’t see the swimmers’ faces while they are racing, you really only see their faces in interviews. Like with hurling, really.

Adeleke is known nationally because she’s instantly recognisable, Ireland’s first real properly black sports star, because she’s brilliant, and because athletics in general is a sport where you will recognise people because you see their faces up close.

We see Kellie Harrington’s face up close and we hear her. She’s a miles bigger national star than Wiffen and bigger than Clifford.

GAA sports tend not to produce real national figures. The real national figures the GAA does produce tend to be managers.

David Clifford is like Shaw’s, he’s an almost nationwide star. He’s not as big a recognised star as Jason Sherlock was.

[mikehunt]

… and that was just you and your bro in the inflatable pool out the back garden.

[myboyblue]

@Julio_Geordio

We could surely be good at waterpolo. The fucking state of it

Friend of mine was a decent water polo player. He said what went on under the water at the higher levels was brutal and wouldn’t recommend it.

I didn’t dig any further

[Kyle]

Mudder of fucking gawd the fucking cunting golf is still going on.

[Cheasty]

@myboyblue

Friend of mine was a decent water polo player. He said what went on under the water at the higher levels was brutal and wouldn’t recommend it.

I didn’t dig any further

You’d think Israel would be good at it.

[Kyle]

A thumb up the ass?

[Mac]

Yep she sure is

[myboyblue]

That and its advisable to be shaven.

[flattythehurdler]

Bag snatching and booting. Oh mo Dhia, the kicking. And taking a ball in the face would flatten your nose

[Fagan_ODowd]

@flattythehurdler

Bag snatching and booting. Oh mo Dhia, the kicking. And taking a ball in the face would flatten your nose

I used to work with a fella who played it seriously with Half Moon. As decent and kind a lad as you would encounter in a lifetime but he was supposed to be an absolute savage in the pool.

[johnnysachs]

David Clifford says hello

[Batigol]

@Mac

Just seen the interview with the girls. Such brilliant energy from them. Interesting how they talk about the importance of being ahead at 200m so the next runner has the inside line for the handover. Very tactically smart

Team seems to lined up well too. Becker is lightning off the blocks and Mawdsley is a good finisher. Adeleke will improve them no end but I’d imagine a couple of the other teams have athletes that’ll improve them too