Team Ireland Daily Diary at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

[OlympicIRL 5,668]

4 hours ago, Cosmo Kramer said:

Interesting to start to hear about the next steps for our medal winners after Paris. Paul O'Donovan obviously having to change boat but McClenaghan talking about expanding into more gymnastics disciplines. McSharry sadly sounding like she's going to pack it in. Possibly Fintan McCarthy also? Wiffen's just getting started I'd imagine.

McCarthy said in an interview after the gold that he would try to be there in 2028 so looks like he is considering giving it a go to see if he can make it in the open weight category. Hope they do give it a shot, if it doesn’t work out then he’ll always be a double Olympic champion.

[Cosmo Kramer 24]

17 minutes ago, OlympicIRL said:

McCarthy said in an interview after the gold that he would try to be there in 2028 so looks like he is considering giving it a go to see if he can make it in the open weight category. Hope they do give it a shot, if it doesn’t work out then he’ll always be a double Olympic champion.

I think it's going to be a huge ask to be honest. O'Donovan is obviously an exceptional rower so he maybe might have a chance at a push but I'm not sure McCarthy does. Hope I'm wrong. I wonder if there's scope for him to give the coastal stuff a go, but I don't know enough about that new event to know whether it could be possible or not. I saw him in one interview talking about the final being his last ever weigh-in, but saying that it might be different for Paul. The way he said it seemed to suggest that he thought he was maybe done.

[OlympicIRL 5,668]

7 minutes ago, Cosmo Kramer said:

I think it's going to be a huge ask to be honest. O'Donovan is obviously an exceptional rower so he maybe might have a chance at a push but I'm not sure McCarthy does. Hope I'm wrong. I wonder if there's scope for him to give the coastal stuff a go, but I don't know enough about that new event to know whether it could be possible or not. I saw him in one interview talking about the final being his last ever weigh-in, but saying that it might be different for Paul. The way he said it seemed to suggest that he thought he was maybe done.

Well it is his last weigh in because there’s no more weighing in for lightweight. There would be no need to weigh in for open weight boats. And I think he means Paul might still have another race planned. It is a very tough ask but would like to see them try it. 

Edited August 4, 2024 by OlympicIRL

[Cosmo Kramer 24]

That was my initial thought, but then he differentiated between himself and Paul in a way that made me think he meant more than that. Maybe Paul is just doing some more lightweight races or something like that. We'll see how it goes.

[OlympicIRL 5,668]

1 minute ago, Cosmo Kramer said:

That was my initial thought, but then he differentiated between himself and Paul in a way that made me think he meant more than that. Maybe Paul is just doing some more lightweight races or something like that. We'll see how it goes.

Yeah O’Donovan is going to the worlds so he will still need to weigh in there. But Fintan said he wants to be there or try to be in 2028 so no initial plans on packing up just yet.

[Cosmo Kramer 24]

Great run from Cathal Doyle, PB in the Olympics despite it being his third race in three days. Really impressive.

[feargale 3]

On 8/2/2024 at 1:15 AM, Oldira said:

What about handball? A few fit tall fellas able to throw a ball around? Surely we have loads of candidates? 

Gaelic football, Soccer, hurling, hockey, wall handball - throwing a ball is not something that comes naturally to the Irish.

Unless you could engineer a few crossovers by cricket bowlers or maybe rugby players.

[feargale 3]

On 8/1/2024 at 7:37 PM, Cosmo Kramer said:

Kazakh, Polish, Azeri, Canadian and a "neutral" judge I think. But it wasn't about where they were from, it was about where they were. Even the French girl knew she lost that. The fact that the next Olympics are in the US is probably the only thing that might keep boxing on the programme. But we really need to be focusing our resources elsewhere. Get the velodrome built for starters.

There was always an issue about politically influenced judging in the days of the Iron Curtain, e.g. Fred Tiedt. They haven't gone away, you know.

[feargale 3]

On 8/3/2024 at 12:53 AM, Cosmo Kramer said:

https://www.medalspercapita.com/#medals-per-capita:2024

 

One medal table we're performing particularly well on. After a day of both glory and frustration, easy to forget that we're doing really well for a country of our size this year.

 

Fingers crossed for Rhys tomorrow.

Northern Ireland has athletes at Paris variously numbered at 37 to 41, of whom about six are representing the UK, with the rest representing Ireland. What is heartening is that those competing for Ireland come in more or less equal measure from both major communities. Perhaps this augurs well for the future.

So in reality our athletes are representing seven million plus people, which puts your assessment table just a little on the generous side to us. But we won't lose any sleep over that.

[Ogreman 379]

15 hours ago, Oldira said:

I thought this forum would be hectic all week but a lot of Irish contributors have disappeared. Wonder are they actually at the games? I miss Ogreman and his boxing and rowing analysis.

Not at the games, just haven't posted much during the games so apologies for that. Just haven't had as much time as I would have needed to do some of the things I had kind of wanted to get done. On the boxing, I just haven't had that many sophisticated thoughts on it beyond erratic judging and a dissapointing Irish display that I haven't fully got my head around. I missed a few sessions that I haven't had the chance to catch up on and the majority of the rest with the exception of the Irish fights it has been my second/third screen and boxing kind of needs your full focus. (plus that boxing thread has descended into some form of madness I do not think I can tame.)

That said I do think my predictions/ rankings ultimately held up a little better than they were trending towards after the first few days but I won't have a full look back on them until after the boxing finishes and those first couple of days were just me wondering how I had spent so much time watching all of these fellas only to get so much so badly wrong.

This does remind me I need to do a wrap up of my rowing form rankings but I was planning to update them daily and just didn't in the end.

But yeah there were other things I wanted to do even smaller pieces of analysis on and just didn't get around to but I will post most of my thoughts once the games are over.

So apologies, but it's nice to know someone misses me when I go somewhat quiet on this forum.