The AH Tokyo 2020 Olympics/Paralympics Thread in 2021

Fair play McCormack and Diver from Aus.

Bah more golf on rte, what about the b ball with the two cork lads??? Off to sleep i suppose.

A fantastic top 10 finish in the marathon at age 44 for Sinead Diver from Belmullet, Co. Mayo (or Sinead Dyver as she was called throughout the Eurosport commentary tonight). No doubt a very satisfying two fingers from her to Athletics Ireland who deemed her times insufficient to represent the country some years ago, requiring her to switch to her second choice nation, Australia.

Interesting reading her bio on the Olympics website she is very critical of her catholic school upbringing where she says the nuns that ran her school discouraged female participation in sports - as a result she didn't realise her athletic talent until she was in her 30s - who knows what she might have achieved had she been brought up in a more positive sporting environment. While things will have improved somewhat since then, if we want to improve our performances in international sports we need to develop and encourage talent from a young age rather than treat sport as an afterthought as has been done in the past.

It seems like a really odd thing to give someone a horse at random, it cost her a shot at gold, I know the Irish athlete had similar issues

They love their horses them equestrian athletes.

In fairness the punch probably hurt less than that whip in her hand

But seriously, women's sport 🤭

Last chance for the US to get a hold track medal in the 4x400.

US finally gets a track gold in this Olympics.

Quite a bad German media reaction to the entire incident. The rider took a lot of criticism and her coach even more so. Also, German Olympic officials were distancing themselves from the whole thing last night.

The Germans also had to send a cycling coach home for being heard calling Middle Eastern riders "camelherders"

India record is abysmal

The question is what do we want to achieve with our spending on sport, do we want elites winning medals or do we want mass participation.

If the masses want GAA, rugby and soccer facilities and that is what gets more people off the couch well then that's a far better use of public money than for a feel good factor every four years.

The concept is about being a soldier behind enemy lines trying to escape - which is quite interesting and explains the jumping on a random horse aspect. Maybe they should replace the horses with WWII era motorcycles and have barbed wire fences instead of poles.

6 of NZs 7 golds came in rowing and canoeing (the 7th in Rugby!). They've put huge money in to both over the last decade. What it does show is that the best strategy for Olympic success for small nations is to heavily target 2 or 3 sports max. where there may be potentially "soft" golds available. Pointless building velodromes and large pools imho.

One way of getting more medals is to make GAA professional but force the players to take up an olympic sport on the side

Philippines got its first gold medal in over a century at this Olympics- population over 100m. This shows it comes down to money

It's correct application of both. Population alone is nothing if people don't have access to training and facilities. What population gives you is good numbers in every sport even the very niche ones but it definitely still needs plenty of money to turn it into GB or Japan level medals

The one person that actually won't watch.

Individual sports have always been a lack of emphasis on individual sports in Ireland. Pretty much the non field sports.

When I was growing up I don't think I knew anybody that competed in an sport other than the Big 3 or Hockey. A couple of lads played golf but that's about it.

There also needs to be questions about lottery funding. The UK has a sporting system that is the envy of nearly all countries which is funded by the lottery. I was watching something the other day (Track Cycling,I think) and one of the athletes was doing an interview after and she even took time to thank the lottery.

The lottery was originally meant to for funding sports. Remember all of the sports apparatus on the old tickets? Now it goes to funding things the HSE, dodgy NGO's and some box ticking excercises.

Essentially we need an elite sporting programme. Where money distributed is done on sporting grounds and not politically. All of those AstroTurf pitches are not being built because politicians really care about kids playing sports.

Ultimatums need to put to sports to start getting your houses in order. Start bringing value to the country either economically or emotionally, or your funding is getting cut. And that includes the Big 3 field games.

The sports council needs to be over spending, first emphasis should be the overall health and fitness of the nation and then international competition. At the moment spending is political with blatant favouritism given to the constituency of the Minister for sport.