Cosmo Kramer

They did ok...

Have to be fancying him for at least one medal in the pool, if not two, with Hafnaoui out. Open water swim would be a good free shot for him after that, why not go for it.

In the midst of a fair amount of anger and the subsequent fallout of selecting three runners from six who had the qualification time, it's notable that Mayo woman Sinead Diver has been selected in the marathon again for Australia at the age of 47. Diver produced a top 10 finish in Tokyo three years ago at 44, and much as she wouldn't be a medal contender, I'll always feel that Irish athletics missed a massive opportunity in terms of promoting distance running to a slightly older audience by keeping her at arms length from the Ireland setup following her late emergence in Australia. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-03/marathon-selection-dramas-jessica-stenson-lisa-weightman/103912712

Probably the other thing worth noting as well is that, other than awaiting confirmation that McIlroy, Lowry, Maguire and Meadow are our four golfers and will be taking their places, I don't think there are any remaining genuine medal prospects who have yet to confirm a qualification quota. There are places on medal potential teams, boats, horses and bikes to be confirmed but the actual qualification places have already been achieved. So we can probably start to get a better view of where our medal potential is now. I think there are probably 30 events that we can consider ourselves to have at least some chance of winning a medal in. Some are bigger hopes than others of course. Probably a medal return rate of around 20% from those would be the aim for the team in Paris i.e. six medals. 10 boxing (because any of them might have a chance with a kind draw) 5 rowing 4 athletics 3 equestrian 2 swimming 2 golf 2 cycling 1 gymnastics 1 rugby maybe 1 taekwondo at a push Can we pull 6+ medals out of that, and hopefully at least one gold somewhere in all that?

Athletics and golf are the two big ones from here. Golf should provide us with four places provided everyone is fit and ready to go. Plenty of backups on the men's side if we lose either McIlroy or Lowry, but we likely need Maguire and Meadow available to be able to take our two women's places. Athletics could provide six to ten more qualifiers between now and the games. Still a couple of possibilities in other sports as well.

Unfortunate for McDonagh, but not all the tight outcomes are going to go our way. 10 qualifiers is a fantastic outcome, if we could convert that into two or three medals in Paris that would be excellent.

Yeah, I don't think he needed to be that standoffish, I get the idea behind what he was doing but he probably took it a bit too far. Still though, it worked for him today, so we'll take it.

So it's a full house on the women's side, thanks to Daina Moorhouse. Fantastic effort all round. Nine boxers qualified now, would be great to get at least one more from Walsh and McDonagh to get it into double figures, but either way it's been a successful weekend. Our overall qualification total is closing in hard now on the record 117 that competed in Tokyo, and there's still six weeks worth of qualifications to come. Also worth noting that Ireland are one of only three countries to qualify in all six weights on the women's side. The other two are China, who have just a slight population advantage over us, and Australia who have a much easier qualification path via the Pacific Games.

Eight qualifications in boxing was the target I think, so that's now been achieved. A real chance now to qualify in all six women's weight categories, which would be some going.

Broadhurst gambled the house and lost. As much as any pro career would be Team Amy, like any Irish boxer her marketability would largely need to be based on her Irishness and an ability to sell tickets off the back of that. That's gone now with her defection, and it doesn't seem as though there's any love for her in the GB setup either. Her best/only hope might be to stay amateur, come home with her tail between her legs and try to build some kind of redemption narrative in Ireland. But the more likely outcome of all of this is that she's finished.

Interest in the men's side thinning out now. A one in four box off for Walsh and McDonagh is the only other still involved. It's all over for Amy Broadhurst as well, which in truth is no harm from our point of view. If Grainne Walsh qualifies her selection will be very much vindicated now. Broadhurst has missed her olympic opportunity and probably significantly damaged her potential appeal as a pro boxer by switching nations. Who will pay to watch her box as a pro now...a question for another forum I suppose.

Mari out now as well with an injury picked up in his previous bout.

Fourth for Bergin and Hyde in their race. Overall a disappointing event for Ireland and the concerns about our rowing hopes going in to Paris remain. If anything, with O'Donovan and McCarthy playing catch-up in the lightweights, things are probably worse than expected. Plenty of scope to make finals at Paris, but improvement needed if there is to be any more than a single rowing medal in these games for us.

Lightweight doubles pushed down to third in their final. Well beaten by the Italians and the Swiss beat them two days in a row. Still very likely to win a medal at the games but no longer looking like our best gold medal hope. While we have arguably more medal potential at these Olympics than any previous to this, it's getting more and more difficult to see where any golds might come from.

Yes, doesn't look like it's going to work out for the men's pairs this year. I haven't given up on the doubles yet, will need to see where they are when they come back. Keogh and Murtagh look like they'll be racing the Romanians for bronze in the Olympics at best.

A comfortable bronze for Murtagh and Keogh in Lucerne ahead of the Greeks but well behind Netherlands and Australia. Corrigan and Kearney well off the pace in their race, the change of personnel not massively changing the fortunes for that boat.

Some very encouraging performances in the rowing. The Swiss LWs are the real deal, but the two lads have been warned now and will know that they will have to find another gear to win gold. It occurred to me this morning that as things stand it's possible that both our Olympic gold medalists from Tokyo could end up losing their crowns to "Ireland" athletes in Paris (to Amy Broadhurst and Ahumada Ireland). Hopefully not though!

The Keenan story is good news and it sounds like one or two more from the provinces might make the temporary move across, though not as big names as him. Tough for some of the long term sevens players who will miss out, but it's the right call I think. A major part of Ireland taking sevens more seriously was the Olympic aspect, so we need to throw everything we can at it.

I currently have us down for 106 qualifiers: Rugby 24 Rowing 16 Hockey 16 Athletics 14 Equestrian 7 Cycling 7 Boxing 6 Swimming 5 Sailing 4 Kayaking 3 Badminton 2 Gymnastics 1 Taekwondo 1 For athletics relays I've included two spots for the mixed 4x400 as Adeleke and Mawdsley are already included as individual qualifiers. For the women's 4x400 I've included three spots as again Adeleke and Mawdsley are individually qualified but Adeleke almost certainly won't run the heats so it seems fair to include spaces for Healy, Becker + one other. We'll likely bring at least two more athletes as relay reserves, but should they be counted in the total if there's no guarantee they'll actually compete in the Olympics? Or should they be treated the same as a hockey reserve goalkeeper who might not actually end up competing either? If so, that would take us to 108. For swimming relays I've included two spots on the women's side in addition to McSharry and Walshe. I haven't included a men's relay team at this point because - as I understand it - we haven't fully fulfilled the criteria to the extent that we can be certain we'll be sending a team.

Just need to hope we're not adding Rhys McClenaghan to that list before the summer is out!

A real shame for Sanita, her and the Olympics never went well together for whatever reason.

That's huge. Obviously he's been off it this year, but I was still working on the basis that he would come good again in time for Paris. Wiffen with a huge shot at two medals now if he can stay fit from here to the games.

Yes, I think Wiffen is key. If he could win two medals of any colour in his two events, and on the basis that the lightweight rowers are a near certain medal, that would put us on three already and in a good position to kick on from there. Notable actually that a lot of our medal prospects are competing in the first week this time, I'm so used to us being focused on boxing and athletics historically that I have become accustomed to watching on the basis that we won't win most of whatever we get until near the end of the games.

Thanks for the summation of things, in particular it's good to get updates on where we stand on some of the lesser discussed sports that we are unlikely to challenge for medals in. If I was to try to call it three months out I'd say we're looking at five to six medals at present. I will accept that I'm factoring in an element of "things always seem to go wrong for us at the Olympics" into that. But right now I'd call us for one boxing medal (possibly two), one rowing medal (I'm definitely a bit spooked by recent form), one swimming medal and one athletics medal. As well as one other medal across everything else from golf to rugby to equestrian to gymnastics - I think those sports are too much "on the day" sports to predict more than one medal across them all. I'm going to be brave and go for two golds within that, although to be honest I'm not sure where exactly the second gold is coming from! More a case that if you throw enough darts at the board one of them will hopefully hit the bullseye. In terms of your comparison to other countries I think we can be a bit selective in terms of who we compare ourselves to. For instance there isn't an Olympics that passes that I don't see us being compared unfavourably to New Zealand and Denmark multiple times. But, similar to Ogreman, I've done a little bit of not especially scientific analysis of where we're stand in recent games compared to developed countries of similar population to our own. So I've taken the average number of medals won by ourselves and the 20 developed countries nearest to us in terms of population (10 more populous, 10 less populous, ordered by population) across the last three games. I accept that, as a starting point, our own population is open to a degree of interpretation given the partial inclusion of Northern Ireland within our Olympic team, but let's just go with it for now... Country/Avg medals per Olympics 2012-2020 Austria 2.67 Switzerland 8 Hong Kong 2.33 Serbia 7 Bulgaria 4 Denmark 11.67 Singapore 1 Finland 2 Norway 5.33 Slovakia 4 Ireland 4 New Zealand 17 Costa Rica 0 Oman 0 Kuwait 1.33 Croatia 8 Georgia 7 Uruguay 0 Bosnia 0 Puerto Rico 1.33 Armenia 3.33 I guess what this shows is is that, despite the significant misfire in Rio, we're pretty much right in the middle for a develop country of our population, or maybe slightly above. Of the 10 more populous countries four have averaged higher than us, four lower and two the same. Of the 10 less populous countries three have averaged higher than us and seven lower. The average number of medals across all of the countries listed is 4.2. Possibly the most notable thing of all is that, much as we often compare ourselves unfavourably to Denmark and New Zealand, and correctly so, it is very much them that are the outliers and not us. Not that we shouldn't aspire to those numbers, but realistically given the added sporting competition we face compared to most countries due to Gaelic football, hurling and 15s rugby, it's probably unrealistic to ever expect to challenge them on the medals table on any kind of consistent basis. One other statistical note I'd just add is that if we do win five medals this summer we'll have won 20 medals across the last five Olympics from 2008 to 2024. That would equal the total number we won in all 18 previous games combined from 1924 to 2004 inclusive. And that's even with the (very generous) inclusion of the four 1996 medals in the 1924 to 2004 total. So we're definitely making significant progress.

Sigh...I really don't want to spend any more time on this, it's not what this thread is about and particularly as my original point was how we are funded versus ourselves in the past and not compared to other countries. But, unless you can point to over 100 NOCs that invest more per competitor or per head of capita than we do we are very obviously not "underfunded compared to most countries". Anyway, the relays. Amazing. Bronze in the mixed team and would most likely have been silver in the women's but for the impossible scheduling. There really needs to be some significant thought now put into how we could maximise what we have available to us for Paris. Looking at the schedule we surely have to go full steam for the mixed team in Paris now. The gap from the final to the start of the individual isn't great, but let's face it as long as Rhasidat is fully fit she could nearly jog the first round of the individual by her standards and get through. Not ideal for Sharlene if she's in the individual event, but you just know she'll want to throw everything at the relay where there might be a shot at an Olympic medal if it all falls right. Realistically we're not going to have Rhasidat for the women's relay heats - unless things have gone surprisingly badly in the individual event for her. But Healy/Becker/Mawdsley plus one of the others could be good enough to sneak into the final. And if they're successful maybe Rhasidat would come back in once more (might depend on how she's feeling at that point to be fair). Is that too optimistic a schedule in terms of what's possible for Rhasidat? It might be, let's see how her outdoor season goes first. It's exciting though.