The AH Tokyo 2020 Olympics/Paralympics Thread in 2021

I know what you mean, but they would be counted by the IOC as different events within the same sport - the sport being athletics, the events being the 400m hurdles and the hammer.

But that is incredibly short sighted, just how do you think we ever get a 45 second runner if we don't first have 50 and 48 second runners? Is your plan to cut all funding to the sport and just hope that a 45 second runner falls out of a tree somewhere?

Thomas Barr running a PB at the Olympics can encourage an Irish child somewhere to take up running, some investment can give that child somewhere to run, if enough children do that then perhaps 10/20 years down the line we actually might have a 45 second athlete. If we give up at the start just because we can't compete immediately then of course it will never happen.

I don't remember Andy Lee having a "turned his life around" or Joshua for that matter

Yawn. You know I didn't say or mean that. Boxing probably isn't the best way to invest in these areas (who are amongst the most heavily invested areas in the country).

There are lots of individual sports for younger people to get involved in without the gamble of turning them into trained fighters for the Saturday Night outside Abrakababra Fighting Championships.

I think that if you haven't competed in a countries underage competitions or developed within a countries structures then you shouldn't be able to compete for that country.

What good is it to Irish sport if someone swans in here and uses this countries flag to complete under because they weren't good enough to make it in their true home nation?

I agree, all national representation on the grounds of residency alone, in all sports, should be abolished.

You should be entitled to a passport of that Country, either as a right of citizenship, of birth or of heritage no further back than Grandparent.

For example, Sifan Hassan came to the Netherlands as a 15yo refugee and became naturalised in her new Country. That's fine, wear the orange with pride.

Then, you have Bahrain, who go scouting in the Horn of Africa and recruit talented runners, bringing them back and giving them citizenship and funding. Bahrain won ten athletics medals in the 2018 Asian Games - every single one by an African born athlete with no ties to Bahrain except transactional. Qatar and Turkey and others also do this. At the moment, it's legal, but its absolute bullshyt.

Ireland has at least one velodrome, albeit outdoor - Sundrive.

The real question that's never asked us why should the state build a track for what is a hugely inaccessible sport (track bikes are very expensive). What has cycling in Ireland done in order to meet the state halfway?

The truth is that building 10 community soccer pitches will have a greater positive impact than building a velodrome ever will.

That's my thought whenever I see these "Ireland needs to spend millions on elite sporting facilities" comments once every 4 years. The majority of the media and public simply don't care how our non team sport athletes do most of the time outside of the olympics. It's safe to say that when out canvassing politicians don't get many voters demanding more funding and facilities for elite track cyclists and gymnasts. They do however get plenty of people wanting grants for their local pools, astroturfs, running tracks, pitches etc. so this is where the money goes.

Or do??

Which is essentially why sports spending needs to be taken away from politicians. UK Sport is funded through the lottery and governmentand UK Sport themselves issue the funding. They are pretty cut-throat with sports that don't produce. They have gotten it wrong at times but it cannot be denied it has been a massive success.

Lotto money is now just being used for for stuff general taxation should have accounted for. Even shady lobby groups like Alcohol Action Ireland get lotto funding just to mouthpiece government policy.

We need a Sport Program with Targets and the words "unlucky" barred forever. Out of the way of politicians. People only accountable by performance. Genuine medal targets and high pressure to perform.

Sure we can't use them because they are all full of cars parked illegally because car drivers don't know the rules of the road.

Even worse the illegally parked cars are not even painted in hi-vis so you can't see them

UK Sport allocates funding for high performance sports across GB & Northern Ireland. Sport Ireland does the same here. They are both answerable to their relevant government departments, so whats the difference?

GB spent around £350m for the Tokyo Olympic cycle compared to just over £30m for Ireland. Not a huge difference when you adjust for population. Ultimately, whether you regard the lotto as a tax or not, the money comes from the people.

For these games there was a target for 3-4 podium finishes which has been met and that will be higher for Paris. There already is a sports programme with targets, and doesn't have the word unlucky in it, it faces reviews and adjustments when necessary, pretty much the same as UK Sport or any other governing body does it. Room for improvement? Always.

I am going to be lost this week during working from home. I had the Euros, then the Tour De France, then Olympics. I'm going to have to actually work

The Vuelta is not far off

Why haven't they gone and built one themselves? There are plenty of vacant industrial units that a track could be installed in.

Cycling Ireland has close to 30k members paying subs. A €10 development levy for 10 years on subs would go a long way to funding a velodrome.

Road bikes and cycling equipment cost an absolute fortune too, so there's plenty of money in Irish cycling.

To be honest I don't know enough about the finances of Cycling Ireland or its membership structure to know whether they could fund a velodrome but I imagine if they could they would have.

They are currently paying to send athletes to Spain for training as well as all the road races some of which cost a fortune to run. Also you can make money from the public who pay to use the velodrome so if they could afford one I imagine they would build it

That's €3M you've raised. If it goes 'a long way' towards funding a velodrome, then presumably you see the cost as circa €5M?

That seems an optimistic figure to me to do it privately- even the land acquisition would surely eat a lot of that money as it looks the sort of structure that has a big footprint and needs a good bit of acreage. It's a 250M oval-track after all. I'm not sure whether you intend it to be outdoor or indoor. Presumably outdoor/uncovered would be cheaper, though that might be a false economy in Ireland's climate. Indoor or majority covered would hopefully allow us to bid for/host European events, though now we are talking 1000 seats, car parks, access roads etc, adding to the expense. Indoor would also allow it to be used for other non-cycling events though. Even if we go with the velodrome being outdoors, you'd still need a lot of associated indoor buildings - changing rooms, toilets, admin, medical centre.

It seems a lot for a small body like Cycling Ireland to be taking on - there's a reason why in most countries these things are funded/built/ran by government/local authorities.

Was the ref being over zealous though? The amount of holding didn't seem that unusual for a third round. You see holding going on in loads and loads of fights, especially when boxers are getting tired. And the ref even admonished the Brazilian at one point in the last round for holding.

See yis next time.

We once had a great tradition in hammer throwing and similar events but the draw of team field sports is huge in Ireland and convincing people to give it up for Olympic level training in something else is tough

i think I posted this somewhere else earlier. Sorry if it was here and also what was the Velodrome documentary

The powers that be have been banging on about a velodrome for almost 20 years now. However it is a bit closer now in so far as Sports Ireland have outlined a site of public land for it to go on, irrc it is on the Sports Ireland campus in Blanch so pretty close to the existing Olympic sized swimming pool. The land is there and has been earmarked but whats missing is funding from central government because there is no way Cycling Ireland can fund it on their own with the funding they get from Sports Ireland.Back in 2016 they were talking of funding but now in 2021 there is still no shovels in the ground.

Cost wise this article says 8 million, that would be an indoor one but obviously not with the mad architecture you see at the Olympic one in Toyko. Personally I think 8 million is optimistid and it would be more like 15m or so. However it is a one off investment that allows our best cyclists to compete indoors all year around instead of this crap of sending 5 of them down to Majorca to use a velodrome there at great expense. What you want is our 5 best cyclists racing against the next 50 best on home soil week in week out. Once they get lots of indoor racing leagues going that would raise the performance bar for everyone and you'd hope in time we could send a lot more track cyclists to the Olympics

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/shane-stokes-velodrome-project-crucial-to-future-success-of-ireland-s-cyclists-1.2606357

Is there much of a point to a velodrome outside of medals? Medals are all well and good for a feel good factor but they don't do much themselves. It feels like it would be hard for ordinary people to get involved in using the velodrome. Something like skateparks, climbing walls, swimming pools would be easier for people to use. Encourage general fitness among the population and provide amenities. If they lead to gold medals then so much the better.

I think the olympics are great for showing the breadth of sports out there but I feel like all the benefits of the gold medals for a country is to simply encourage more people to partake in that sport and potentially find the sport they love. Funding something not massively usable to the general public has limited benefit.