Let’s start with Kathleen Maguire of Ballyconnell, Co Cavan. If the name rings a bell it’s maybe because she is a bit of a regular in the media, particularly when appearing alongside her granddaughter Leona anytime there’s a homecoming after a famous golf victory. And she will get around to watching the golf at the Olympics eventually, in the second week. But first, she has to tune into the rowing.
That’s because next Sunday her grandson Ross Corrigan will be competing in the men’s coxless pairs. Ross’s mam and Leona’s dad are sister and brother meaning one 97-year-old on the Cavan/Fermanagh border will have two grandchildren fighting it out in Paris, chasing medals in two entirely different sports.
Let’s hop up the road to Tallaght now. St Thomas’s National School is four minutes away from St Mark’s Junior School, both of them in Jobstown. The Tallaght Echo reported last month that deprivation levels in Jobstown had increased by 50 per cent between 2016 and 2022, and that unemployment in the area is running at 33 per cent. But from there you can go anywhere.
You want proof? Tune into the games on Wednesday, August 7th. In the morning Jack Woolley (St Thomas’s NS, class of 2011) will suit up for his second Olympics in Taekwondo. If he gets past the qualification rounds his medal bouts will be that same evening.
Meanwhile, half an hour north in the Stade de France, Rhasidat Adeleke (St Mark’s NS, class of 2014) will be running the semi-final of the 400m and trying to make the sort of history only available to the special few. The whole country will be roaring her on but the shouts and screams from those few square miles in Tallaght are going to ring different. One of their own. Two of their own.
All of our own. Let’s take a spin through Grange, Co Sligo. It won’t take us long. When you come down the N15 from Donegal, Grange is a bend in the road to the left and then a bend in the road to the right and then you’re out the other side. It’s St Molaise Gaels GAA grounds, it’s a SuperValu, a Circle K, a couple of pubs and takeaways and a kids’ playcentre.
At the last census Grange claimed a population of 569 people. By the published age breakdown, 52 of them were in their 20s. Even if we allow for the possibility that neither swimmer Mona McSharry nor 400m relay runner Chris O’Donnell were there at home on census night in 2022 you get the picture.
This hamlet, this toenail at the foot of Ben Bulben is sending two of its young people to the greatest show in sport. Not only that, they’re doing so for the second time in a row. Both McSharry and O’Donnell went to Tokyo too, where both of them made a final and both came home with a national record.
This is the thing with the Olympics. Everything about it is broken except the idea. The games come around every four years bulging with self-importance, performatively oblivious to all the liars and cheats and charlatans who’ve disgraced it over the years – and god knows our benighted little rock has held its own in that regard.
But still, percolating away in there somewhere, magic exists. It’s there in the frankly amazing notion that every 48 months the whole planet sends its people to one agreed place at one agreed time to play a load of games that will be remembered forever. That magic isn’t as powerful as it used to be but there’s an enduring doggedness to it all the same. And it’s enough, this time around, to pull in the biggest team Ireland has ever sent to the Olympics.
Late on Tuesday afternoon the news came through to Canoeing Ireland that Michaela Corcoran had squeezed into the last available spot in the C1 slalom event. It meant that Team Ireland for the Paris Olympics, competing in 15 sports, officially rounds off at 133 athletes. That number has been steadily rising over the past 20 years – from 49 in Athens, to 54 in Beijing, to 66 in London, to 77 in Rio, to 116 in Tokyo.
Partly the explosion in numbers over the past two Olympic cycles has been down to the rise of a couple of team sports. Two hockey teams went to Tokyo, one hockey and two rugby sevens teams will be in Paris. But even if you took out the 40 athletes from those three teams you’d still be left with 93 Olympians in 13 different sports going to Paris. This is our most fecund Olympic age whatever way you slice it.
This team will win medals. Possibly – probably, in fact – the most ever. The record haul for an Irish team at an Olympics is the six they ended up with at London 2012, and it will count as a slight disappointment if that isn’t seen and raised this time. That would have been a wild thing to think, never mind say out loud at any stage in the 96 years this country has been sending people to the Olympics. But –—.
A few of the rowing crews should medal. A few of the boxers too. In there will be Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy, as well as Kellie Harrington. Not since Pat O’Callaghan in 1932 has an Irish Olympic gold medal been successfully defended – the lightweight pair and the lightweight boxer will be out to make their own history. If the rowers do it O’Donovan will be the first Irish person to medal at three games. He will be Ireland’s greatest ever Olympian. He might already be.
There are genuine chances all over the place. Daniel Wiffen and Rhys McClenaghan are world champions. Adeleke is limitless. Golf is a funny sport to predict but this is the weakest field they’ll face all year so Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry have obvious chances. There could be a showjumping medal – although we always think that and there’s only ever been one. The eventing team won’t mind that nobody’s talking about them.
Medals are about luck and timing as well as everything else. Woolley has completed half the battle in making it to the games where there are only 18 competitors. The rugby sevens lads should at least make the quarter-finals and after that who knows? Lara Gillespie could be a bolter in track cycling. The sailors aren’t going to the Marseille Marina for the sun.
Sport is sport though, and heartache always has its thumb on the scale. The vast majority of the athletes representing Ireland over the coming weeks will come home disappointed. They will spend some time wondering what it was all for. They will get the tattoo of the rings eventually and they will move on with their lives. They are destined to be generally forgotten, or at best to be Wikipedia fodder for sports trivia sickos.
But before that happens it’s worth taking this moment to look at who they are. It is striking when you run your finger down through all their names and backgrounds to find that so many of the strands of Irish society are represented. All of Irish life is here.
Geographically all points of the island are in there. From Ciara Mageean on the Ards Peninsula to all the rowers in west Cork, from Daniel Coyle the Derry showjumper to Thomas Barr of Ferrybank AC in Waterford. There are inner-city boxers and privately-educated hockey players and rugby players who used to be Gaelic footballers and who might be again in time.
All ages are there too. Bangor swimmer Grace Davison is the youngest at just 16. She wasn’t born when Mallow eventer Austin O’Connor finished 17th at his first games in Sydney. O’Connor is 49 and is competing at his fourth Olympics. Although he’s the oldest, he’s not the most experienced member of the team – the indomitable Fionnula McCormack will make history by becoming the first Irish woman to go to five consecutive Olympics when she runs the marathon on the final day of the games.
So many different types of Irishness too. The immigrant story is in there in all its forms. Whether it’s Adeleke’s parents moving here from Nigeria before she was born or Wiffen’s English mam and dad settling on the Armagh/Down border when he and his twin brother were two. Or Nhat Nguyen’s family coming from Vietnam and raising Ireland’s best badminton player while running a Chinese takeaway in Clare Hall in north Dublin.
And as ever the emigrant story is a factor as well. Mike Corcoran left Glasnevin in the 1980s and represented Ireland in canoeing at the Olympics in 1992 and 1996. A generation on his twin daughters Madison and Michaela are following in his froth by throwing themselves down the slalom course in Vaires-sur-Marne next week. Plenty of the swimmers and divers and hockey players were born abroad as well.
They are who we are, in other words. Everyone who settles in to watch the Irish Olympic team over the coming weeks will be able to see something of themselves.
Men and women, city types and country folk, working class and posho, black and white, gay and straight. At a time when nationalism is being co-opted and kicked around on a daily basis, they are something worth supporting. An actual team of us.
Let the games begin.
Ireland’s Best Medal Hopes, Ranked
1 Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy (rowing)
The reigning Olympic champions have won five gold medals together at world, European and Olympic level, and with the lightweight class being removed from the Olympics after Paris, this is their last chance to command the double sculls event they’ve dominated for five years now. O’Donovan is rated as the best male rower in the world by those in the know, and McCarthy has matured from junior partner to co-captain since Tokyo. The boat the rest of their competition has to beat.
First race: Sunday, July 28th, 11.00am
2 Aoife O’Rourke (boxing)
The Roscommon fighter has won gold at the last three European Championships, going back to 2019. She is seeded in the draw and needs to win two fights to be guaranteed a medal. The record since Tokyo is 28 fights, 27 wins and one defeat – and the woman who beat her in the World Championships isn’t going to be in Paris. She has the skills, the experience and the ringcraft. It’s all just down to performance now.
First fight: Wednesday, July 31st, 10.00am
3 Daniel Wiffen (swimming)
Double world champion. Double world record holder. Triple European short course champion. Everything is pointing towards Paris being a crowning moment for the 22-year-old from Magheralin, Co Down. If there is a reason to be cautious about his prospects it’s that not all the biggest guns took part in the World Championships in Doha in February when he swept the boards. There’s a target on his back now too. But it will be a real surprise if he doesn’t bring back at least one medal.
First race: Monday, July 29th, 10.00am
4 Rhys McClenaghan (gymnastics)
Another double world champion. The pommel horse prince has been through the mill in his career, most obviously in 2021 when he went to Tokyo carrying huge medal hopes but messed up his routine. He has picked himself up in the meantime and improved every year. At his best he wins a medal, possibly gold. But it’s a such a precarious event and one mistake could be crucial.
Qualification event: Saturday, July 27th, 10.00am
5 Kellie Harrington (boxing)
Like Aoife O’Rourke, the fact that she is a reigning European champion means she is seeded into the last 16 and so is two wins away from a medal. Has already said this is the last competition of her boxing life, and she has poured everything into it. Lost her first fight in over three years back in April so she isn’t a dead cert. But has all the experience and know-how to navigate her way through.
First fight: Monday, July 29th, 11.00am
6 Rhasidat Adeleke (athletics)
There are probably slightly better medal hopes elsewhere – Rory McIlroy in golf, Aifric Keogh and Fiona Murtagh in rowing spring to mind – but no Irish athlete is going to draw more people to their TV screens at these games than Adeleke. The women’s 400m is a hot event but not as hot as it could be – Sydney McLoughlin Levrone is sticking to the hurdles, as is Femke Bol. Adeleke is the coming force in the event and we have no idea where her ceiling lies. It could be glorious.
First race: Monday, August 5th, 9.55am
