Ireland gold medals going forward. Some bluesky thinking needed.

[deiseach]

No, keep him there and ship out all Irish middle distance runners to there to learn how a lack of proper facilities prevented David Rudisha from storming to gold last night.

Looking at David Rudisha last night, I despair of ever winning anything. We're just not built like that.

[Bingo]

Ignoring the trolls, there are two reasons we don't win more medals in the Olympics:

1) We don't make the investment. GB won one gold in Atlanta - don't pretend you didn't gloat mightily as they stayed in the nether regions of the medals table while Michelle Smith drove us up it - so they decided to pour lottery money into elite sportspeople. And whaddya know, by Beijing they were up to 19 golds.

2) We don't have the participation levels. The LTA in Britain gets a fortune from the All-England Club to promote tennis but they can't overcome the fact that for the average Brit tennis is a two-week-a-year pursuit. Much the same is true in Ireland for just about all sports except for the four big field games.

And for the most part, neither bothers me. Look at the events New Zealand get most of their medals in. Do you really want to spend money on elite athletes and/or boosting participation levels in kayaking, rowing or sailing? I know I wouldn't. Since John Walker pipped Eamonn Coghlan to the post in Montreal, New Zealand have won a princely total of one medal in the Olympic stadium. It does bother me that there is not enough participation in athletics, but I'd rather money was spent at the grassroots without any expectation of Olympic glory rather than propping up spoilt brats like James 'Jerry Kiernan is a cross-country slogger' Nolan

But, but Dick Ckerkin said its cause we play GAA (personal joke, see Twitter thread).

Its all true what you say and I don't think any one reason can be attributed to it. You need investment, you need participation levels, third level programmes, climate, history etc etc.

At a basic level you need the participation levels but the investment is a major factor in this - facilities, coaching, equipment, competitions etc and then at elite level you need further investment. Its a big undertaking for something that doesn't gurantee success.

[deiseach]

At a basic level you need the participation levels but the investment is a major factor in this - facilities, coaching, equipment, competitions etc and then at elite level you need further investment. Its a big undertaking for something that doesn't gurantee success.

Spoken like a true Liverpool supporter

That's the rub, isn't it? You've got to be able to say "we're spending the money on X because we're a nation of grotesque fatties. If we win an Olympic medal to two, that'd be a bonus"

[Bingo]

At a basic level you need the participation levels but the investment is a major factor in this - facilities, coaching, equipment, competitions etc and then at elite level you need further investment. Its a big undertaking for something that doesn't gurantee success.

Spoken like a true Liverpool supporter

That's the rub, isn't it? You've got to be able to say "we're spending the money on X because we're a nation of grotesque fatties. If we win an Olympic medal to two, that'd be a bonus"

LOL.

Its how the powers that be justify spending money on sports and I can see that it is important to create a healthy nation to save money in the future. I'm sure its one of the most difficult things to prove though.

I mentioned it yesterday but why the Nationery Lottery funding to sports clubs was cut is a mystery to me. It just seems that as its state run the profits were diverted from what it was intended for into Gov coffers and indirectly therefore to help plug the banking gaps.

[magpie seanie]

Olympic Handball is actually great craic to play in my opinion. Was over in France on a student exchange many years ago and played a bit in the schoolyard and enjoyed it thoroughly. When I played basketball with the, ahem, other kids a few days later it was frowned upon but I digress.

It's a shame anyone replied to those idiotic anti-GAA posts. C'mon folks, ignore that rubbish. Maybe New Zealand should give up that rugby lark!!!! Cringeworthy stuff. 

Investment is key. To be fair to the bould CJH, the lottery was supposed to do this but instead it has become a political slush fund that is mostly used to prop un an inefficient health service.

I do think a very valid point was made earlier (not sure by who) about our defeatist mindset. It's ingrained in a lot of people in our country and it's hard to shift.

[the Deel Rover]

Olympic Handball is actually great craic to play in my opinion. Was over in France on a student exchange many years ago and played a bit in the schoolyard and enjoyed it thoroughly. When I played basketball with the, ahem, other kids a few days later it was frowned upon but I digress.

It's a shame anyone replied to those idiotic anti-GAA posts. C'mon folks, ignore that rubbish. Maybe New Zealand should give up that rugby lark!!!! Cringeworthy stuff. 

Investment is key. To be fair to the bould CJH, the lottery was supposed to do this but instead it has become a political slush fund that is mostly used to prop un an inefficient health service.

I do think a very valid point was made earlier (not sure by who) about our defeatist mindset. It's ingrained in a lot of people in our country and it's hard to shift.

There was no need after Hardy's impressive put down.

[nifan]

C'mon folks, ignore that rubbish. Maybe New Zealand should give up that rugby lark!!!! Cringeworthy stuff. 

If NI's grammar schools gave up rugby wed have a better football team....

[Evil Genius]

Proper handball I thought would be the obvious sport (not that primary school nonsense "handball" that's in it at the moment).

Nice show of ignorance. The handball game that's played in the Olympics (actually called Olympic Handball in Ireland to avoid confusion with Gaelic Handball) has been on the Olympic calendar now for for 11 straight games and far from being "primary school nonsense" it's a very physical sport which is the second fastest indoor sport in the world after ice hockey. That level of thinking would be along the lines of a German or Swede who would regard Olympic Handball as "proper handball" and think of Gaelic Handball as being squash without racquets.

It's shit. Boring to play and mind-numbing to watch. For the record, ice hockey might be fast, but it's shit as well, better than primary school "handball" and marginally better than hockey, but still shit. Stick that in your "ignorance" pipe.

"I'm not interested in them, so they must be shit"

Perhaps bigoted thinking like that explains at least partly why Ireland's Olympic record is so poor... 

[Evil Genius]

It's traditional in a discussion to make an observation, e.g. Ireland have a terrible record at the Olympics, then give reasons why that might be the case.

It is also traditional in discussion to at least try to understand the point someone is making before stepping in to denigrate it.

'The Juice' had implied that the explanation for Ireland's poor Olympic record was that it is a "small country with small population etc", therefore we shouldn't expect any more.

I replied by pointing to another very comparable country, NZ, which has an excellent Olympic record.

Whether one agrees with it or not, my post was entirely logical and reasoned, unlike yours.

In Planet EG, you give the reasons then sneer at them all. Cicero it ain't

If "Playing the Man" was an Olympic sport, you'd have more medals than Michael Phelps.

[thejuice]

Hmmm, let me see. Small country, small population, worrying about keeping up with the neighbours.
You could add average weather, a national obsession with a non-Olympic sport that hardly anyone else plays and even a colonial background which imbued the "cult of the amateur" in the national psyche and you might have further excuses for lack of success in the Olympics.

OK, so what are we missing then?

So, indeed why are NZ more successful than us? What are we doing wrong?

Is it that perhaps the interest isn't there in Olympic sports?

A bit like soccer. Sure there are plenty who would love Ireland to win a bit more but attending League of Ireland games is too high a price to pay to actually see it come to fruition.

[Bingo]

Kenya will never win medals apart from running, specifically from 800m to Marathon. Maybe we'll be the same but with boxing instead of the running.

[Franko]

What is the obsession with being good at 'Olympic' sports only?  EG and his kindred spirit MNaG (amongst others) seem to have taken the rather foolish position of defining the sporting prowess of the Irish by our position in the Olympic medals table.

So what if we aren't top of the world in Kayaking, Taekwondo or Rhythmic Gymnastics.  We just happen to be very much top of the table in two of the fastest and most exciting sports in the world.  (IMO of course  )  The fact that we invented these games ourselves makes it all the more satisfying.

Also,  Eammonca1, I don't have any statistics to hand but I would be willing to take a wager that sporting participation as a percentage of population is much higher in Ireland than it is in America.

[AZOffaly]

I would say sporting participation in an organised sense is higher in Ireland than in the states, but that's primarily because the sports we love and play here have large amateur leagues so you can play in a team.

In the states, unless you are an exceptional talent, you are not going to play Football, or baseball beyond High School. Sports leagues for adults are more rec type leagues with Softball and pickup Basketball.

I would say the participation rates in running, golf, and other sports is probably similar. Individual sports I mean.

[magpie seanie]

At present we have at least 1 Gold, 1 Silver and 3 Bronze. When the final table is calculated and you look at it per capita this will have been a very good performance. We should have a had a few more (Joe Ward absolutely done in qualifiers (before results started being overturned), Annalise Murphy dropping the ball) so I'd argue things are getting better. The past is the past.

[ardal]

Wasn't Katie Taylor a winner of some sort of sports scholarship?

Hand ball as we know it, is totally feasible. You'd have to bring in the North Western populace of Spain, make a few wee changes, but they'd destroy us I'd reckon, the balls a fecking rock.

Check out pelota mano

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5oXt7b7MfU&feature=related