Road to Tokyo 2020 - Irish Olympic News

Agree those investment figures for Irish sport don't make for great reading. It's even more dismal for the UK when you consider the amounts they splash out on achieving Olympic glory which suggests they're even more remiss when it comes to grassroots funding.

As for other countries, I'm pretty sure when it comes to the Olympics, the US don't give athletes much federal funding at all. I remember when Billy Walsh went over to take on the boxing job, he had a fair task trying to hold on to a couple of his high profile athletes who were a bit cheesed off due to having no money. Not certain but i think they are basically registered charities and have to generate most of the funding themselves. I don't think our own elite athletes do too badly in comparison but it's always the way that no matter how much money is handed out, people will think it should always be more.

Not to mention other sponsored academies e.g. Nike.

How many is a lot?

I honestly dont know. Buts something that seems to get a decent amount of mention especially with athletics, swimming and gymnastics

The facilities at Abbottstown are absolutely first rate. I bet a lot of the older athletes look around the place and wonder if only I had this when I was competing! It's one part of the jigsaw anyway.

Probably our last real medal hope at 04:30 tomorrow when Kellie Harrington boxes in the QF to try win at least a bronze at 60 kgs..She should have too much for her opponent. Caroline Dubois could await in the semis. Ireland v England!!!

I mean 200m could well pay for top class facilities and provide salary for a top level coach. Facilities and that cost a lot of money but it is partially one time costs. We do seem to be slowly increasing our facilities from Abbots Town, the national aquatic center etc. but that will take time. Especially across a wave of sports.

I have also seen that the smaller an organisation the worse the politics can get within it and Irish sports organisations are definitely not immune to it.

In other news Lilly King becomes the second US swimmer to take aim at the Russians for doping. It is a tough one when a full country has a sponsored doping program. On the other. Did they also dope the tennis stars etc, should they punished for the actions of others or? It doesn't help that the US had a relatively poor time in the pool by their lofty standards so it sounds a little like sour grapes (even if it wasn't the Russians beating them most of the time)

Guys, facilities and all that cost big money. So throwing big money is what it takes to put all the resources into action. Been saying it years, biggest performance enhancer is not pharmacy products, it’s raw hard cash!!!

Of course, you always need the actual talent and athletes to select from.

Unfortunately, for us, GAA has so much a grip on so many, that it’s difficult to get that talent to sprout.

Coaching is huge. Definitely. Rembemer Paul Hession saying in an interview after London that he hadn't left Ireland because of a lack of facilities, it was down to coaching. Looks like we might have an Olympic gold winning coach in John Coghlan but are there many of that calibre actually within the Irish system? Don't know or hear about that many tbh.

Rory Beggan in the 100mt dash...no bother. 😀

https://twitter.com/i/status/1421565709121904642

Yes, he was very stupid to do that..

And of course, in this snowflake “how dare anyone question or criticise anyone” world, nobody saying it. Other than Kenneth Egan, in a roundabout way..

How would we decide which which sports get to be the elite few is my issue.

Just from a purely personal position I can't stand golf or any horse stuff and would even have issues about prioritizing a sport like rowing that has serious issues with snobbery in some places still.

Ide rather just give everyone a chance and enjoy the orgy whether we win or not as long as we don't go back to the 70s standards of winning nothing at all

In the 5 Olympics between 1988 and 2004 we won a grand total of 3 medals. Between 1960 and 1976 we won 1.

We should be aiming for a couple of Gold every Olympics and 5-7 medals but we are improving since 2008 and that has be welcomed too. Hopefully in Paris we finally see fruits of a generation thet are now aiming higher.

Swimming and Athletics should be highly improved in Paris.

That's the perpetual question. I think the obvious and easy answer is you do both and it's a question of what balance you want to find between them. Sport has so many ancillary benefits in terms of health, developing kids, keeping them off the streets etc that the wisdom of investing more in it should be clear to everybody but it's not a handy vote winner for the elected so its usually the low hanging fruit when it comes to making cuts. The sheer myopia is infuriating but will it ever change?