SO what do you think of the Olympic Games so far? Does the fact that we in NEI must receive the Games strained through a B(ritish) BC filter annoy you as much as it annoys me? Is RTÉ determined to fortify the border by not showing the Games north of Dundalk?
When I mention this to people, usually sprinkling my comments with rude words, they shrug their shoulders and tell me that it’s all about who has the rights to show the Games to whom. The UK, they tell me, gets the rights for the UK, the South of Ireland gets them Olyfor the South of Ireland.
But here’s the thing. If it’s possible to arrange trade so that NEI can do business with equal ease in the UK and in the EU, surely it’s possible for the (still) overpaid boffins of RTÉ to be the national broadcaster and broadcast to the nation, not come to a juddering stop when they hit NEI.
At the time of writing, Daniel Wiffen is our Irish Olympics hero. He said he had no intention of leaving Paris without a gold medal and, crikey, that’s just what he’s done – secured a gold for Ireland in the 800 metres swim. He has an identical twin brother who also swims, he wears glasses on the winners’ podium and his accent is part-English, part-Armagh. He cries through the national anthem.
I love this guy, and even if he picked up only a bronze medal – mark that, only – in the 1500m swim, all of Ireland is in his debt for showing us that we don’t have to be also-rans. Enough of the “Ooh, it was such privilege just to be here." Wiffen may talk as though there was a gob-stopper in his mouth, he may have taken a little of the air out of our tyres in the 1500 metres, but he’s given us a masterclass in self-belief.
In addition, of course, Rhys McClenaghan got a gold (pummel horse), Paul O’Donavan and Fintan McCarthy a gold each (men’s lightweight double sculls), and you may wish to bet against Kerrie Harrington taking a gold in the boxing, but don’t ask me to go over the cliff with you.
Mind you, we’ve had gold medallists at the Olympics before, like Ronnie Delaney and Michael Carruth; but the one Irish gold medallist you won’t hear mentioned in the media is Michelle Smith
Remember her? In 1994 she got into the Olympic pool and proceeded to smash all opposition, picking up not one, not two, not three but four medals, three of them gold. Michelle was beautiful, clever, fluent in Irish and insisted she was innocent of any doping claims, which the Americans at the Games, used to sweeping aside mere minnows like Michelle, were quick to insist was the explanation for Michelle’s amazing success. Ultimately, though, the samples which arrived for examination by the Olympic authorities had been polluted by whiskey, and Michelle’s glory was brought crashing down.
She still insists she’s innocent, and whatever the rest of the world may think of her, she still has those medals. I wonder where she keeps them when she isn’t in court practising as a Dublin barrister who specialises in matters of Brexit? Set in a velvet-lined display case, I hope, with the message “F*** the begrudgers!”
In any case, searching for performance-enhancing drugs at the Olympics is as futile as the war on drugs generally. Every athlete, in the water or on land, that you glimpsed this past two weeks – every one of them is using performance-enhancing drugs. Most of these are within the Olympics rules, but I’ll bet a number of them aren’t.
I remember when professional athletes were barred from the Olympic Games. So who’s to say that one day, Olympic athletes won’t be allowed to suck or swallow or inject their performance-enhancing drug of choice, and compete within a handicap system?
