OlympicIRL

Please don’t give the IOC any ideas.

Can someone check if @MagyarBabu is still alive?

I totally understand your feeling. A gold from Wiffen or McClenaghan will have us dancing again, here’s hoping

They are also a superpower on ice which is another form of water

5 days in a row with medals for Ireland now! Pinch me! And the annoying thing is we have let so many medals slip away as well. But I am still delighted with the overall situation. One more gold and we will officially have our most successful games at least in terms of the medal table count.

I feel like Marchand would even beat Riner in judo, this man is a machine

Wow how did Bacon throw away bronze at the end?? Did she miss the wall or what?

I think we were a victim of our own success in terms of qualifying 10 boxers and many at the final tournament. Realistically we didn’t have many medal favourites here and was always going to be a tall ask for a few of them to win a fight depending on the draws. Having said that, only 2 boxers winning a fight is an under performance as a few would have been expected to win against their opposition at least on paper. O’Rourke really didn’t deserve to win I think. The Pole for sure made it messy last round but O’Rourke showed almost no quality in the entire fight. Contrast that with the class and composure of Harrington who exudes quality. Overall, 1 medal is not a complete disaster. Certainly disappointing as with so many boxers and history there was hope there. If Kellie wins a gold which is still a big ask, it would be allow us to gain something positive and on the bigger picture of trying to climb the medal table and beat Atlanta, I would take that now. I do hope boxing stays in the Olympics but only if they change the scoring system. If not I’m happy to see it go.

We do bottle it and do it across many sports but that ties into the point I’m making about having that monkey on your back and also the ingrained culture if having this happen over and over and lacking belief. Equestrian is a lottery so more talking about other sports here. Mindset and culture is much harder to change than the easy fixes like improving funding and opportunities. I was at the rowing in Paris on a day when we only qualified one boat and the others all under-performed and most Irish fans I met were saying isn’t it great how good we did today. That culture is deeply ingrained in our culture of thinking everything is great once we have a flag there However it’s the athletes themselves who are changing this culture ever so slowly. You can see our young talents like McClenaghan, Adeleke, Wiffen are not afraid to talk up themselves and explicitly say they want to be the best in the world. You can see they don’t lack anything in terms of belief. A failure for any of them will not be bottling anything, they will have left everything out there and no stone unturned.

They have tradition on their side and been there and done it all before. Ireland has a significant monkey on the back in that they’ve never won a medal in team equestrian before and only won medal in total over the years. Once a breakthrough is made you’d be surprised how many successes follow but we have yet to make that breakthrough and it’s stifling. The shackles are off for the other nations. That’s my take on it anyway.

Totally agree with your point about us not settling for mediocrity and being happy to be there. I think this is still holding us back a lot and there is too much fear to call a spade a spade and a bad performance a bad performance. You need to be ruthless to deliver medals and I think we still have a culture of settling for less when we have no reason not to dream about winning more. Put an Irish and a New Zealander on the line with similar rank and abilities and you’d nearly bet your bottom dollar that the NZ athlete will be the one who has the confidence they will come out on top. It’s a generalisation of course but it’s still a very evident trait amongst our sports stars. We are getting better and winning way more medals because we are making huge progress in terms of funding, access to facilities and having multiple more medal chances than before. But still we have to still work on our mindset and culture when it comes to where we are. Little old Ireland punching above its weight is a false perception not really serving Irish sport. However we are definitely getting there. The more McClenaghans, Wiffen and O’Donovans we produce who rightly exude confidence and not afraid to show it, you’d imagine we will see more and more coming through with that mindset.

The fact they then got passed by Uruguay and Poland and were way behind everyone at the end, baffling really. Ireland at the Olympics is just the most frustrating thing. We have/had 4 outside medal chances today with sailing and the women’s lightweight double and men’s pair and team jumping later and looking like we will come with nothing in those. The rowers were outside chances but the sailing medal was more than an outside chance given we started ahead of others. So really you would expect one of those 4 to garner a medal. That’s Ireland in the Olympics in a nutshell. Takes about 6 medal chances to get a medal. Anyway, rant over now, don’t like being so critical but hope you understand my emotions and just need to get it out of my system.

Yeah and after all a 4th place finish is commendable for this duo. But my God you can’t compliment them on that…. really amateur there. I know I’m being harsh but sometimes you have to be, if for nothing else for your own sanity.

Uruguay and Poland had nothing to lose by trying to get the perfect start. Ireland had everything to lose and did. Have to say that was really naive.

Well the sailors totally botched that. What else to say.

I wasn’t surprised by the Greek women’s lightweight bronze, I thought they would do it. Great for them to have 2 medals this morning

Congrats to our Greek friends too on a surprise bronze

They did it lads. What a win that was! Second gold medal of these Games . McCarthy and O’Donovan will go down as a couple of the biggest legends in Irish sporting history for years to come!

GOOOOOOOLLLLLDDDD!!!! McCarthy and O’Donovan you legends

Get them into the Greco-Roman wrestling

Bobby Finke won silver for in the men’s 800m.

God the RTE commentary in swimming is abysmal. John Kenny and Nick O’Hare sound like they are 2 drunk guys coming home from a pub trying to comment on the race. And they both slur as well when speaking too which makes it even worse

Eve McMahon made a solid start to her regatta with an 8th place in race 1. Finn Lynch with a 25th place to add to his 9th place from race 1. Leaves him 16th overall.

Great performance and already talking about the next 4 years and going for a medal, love to hear that!

10th place for Fannon in a new Irish record. We are having a wonderful swim meet