Dose of reality required on medal expectations

Joint 62nd in the medals table at the conclusion of the Beijing Olympics is a pretty fair reflection of Ireland"s overall performance at the 2008 Games. A silver medal and two bronze may be disappointing to many, but when one considers this position puts Ireland equal with nations like Austria and Serbia - both of which have considerably larger populations than we have - and ahead of countries like South Africa and Israel, it hasn"t been our worst Olympics by any stretch of the imagination. The problem for some is that our expectations in general are so much higher than they were 20 years ago and Ireland goes into every Olympic Games expecting a greater haul of medals than before. Certainly, our track and field athletes performed way below par, with a couple of notable exceptions, but we have to realise that, as a small nation of four million people, Ireland does not have an Olympic-standard conveyor belt of outstanding talent that can be called upon every four years to step up to the plate and give world-beating performances. Ireland went into these Olympics with relatively low expectations - and with memories still fresh of the disastrous Athens 2004 expedition when our medal haul totalled zero - and this was despite having the best-financed and best-prepared Irish team ever. Some of our higher profile athletes simply failed to perform and that will be a matter for themselves and the Irish Olympic Committee and Irish Sports Council to examine in detail. In several sports where Irish team members could reasonably have expected to feature, there was disappointment, leading to a growing feeling of despondency among the Irish sporting public looking on. And that was before the utter shambles of the horse-doping affair which saw Denis Lynch disqualified from the showjumping final. The success of our boxers, however, has put some badly needed lustre on Ireland"s China performance. Three medals is an impressive tally from a team of five and Kenny Egan, Darren Sutherland and Paddy Barnes deserve all the plaudits they have received and will continue to receive this week. There is particular pride in Meath at the achievements of Darren Sutherland, whose family reside in Navan, and who went back to school to undertake his Leaving Cert in St Peter"s College, Dunboyne. It"s not hard to conclude why Ireland"s boxers managed to get in amongst the medals. Traditionally, boxing has been one of Ireland"s strongest disciplines at the Olympics and, recognising this, both the Irish Amateur Boxing Association and the Irish Sports Council initiated a High Performance Programme in the year before the Athens Games. In the five years since then, it has paid dividends handsomely. This programme, funded to the tune of €600,000 a year, allows our most talented fighters to train like professionals and gives them access to all the requirements and equipment they need, like diet and nutritional advice, specialist coaches and physios as well as computer diagnosis and analysis of techniques and performance. This is exactly the type of approach that other disciplines need to follow. Our nearest neighbours and hosts of the next Olympics, Team GB, had their most successful Games for a century, something that has brought great pride to that country. Britain has managed this through a programme of heavy investment through National Lottery funds and the pursuit of excellence through dedicated programmes for each specialist discipline. It has come at a relatively high cost, however, with each British medal having cost something in the order of €5 million, it is estimated. In an economic downturn, Ireland cannot expect to spend that kind of money in pursuit of Olympic medals but it can look to zone in on particular sports where we are deemed to have a chance and invest in those. It"s called playing to our strengths. Sports Minister Martin Cullen said as much when he remarked at the weekend about how Ireland needed to concentrate on a few sports and try to excel in them, in much the same way as the Caribbean nations, and particularly Jamaica, have done in sprint events, or the Kenyans and Ethiopians in middle and long distance running. Boxing is clearly one on which Ireland can concentrate; perhaps another could be rowing, a discipline in which Irish crews have excelled at European level but regularly fall short of the mark at the Olympics. We all want to see our sporting heroes achieve success. However, we must have realistic expectations when it comes to measuring Irish Olympians" performances and coming 62nd out of over 200 countries competing in Beijing is creditable. Ireland is not going to produce a Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps in time for London 2012 or maybe even the Olympics after that, but by targeting funding in a controlled and co-ordinated fashion and creating the type of facilities that our boxers are now used to can pay dividends if we want to regularly welcome home Olympics champions of the future. In the meantime, let us praise those who have excelled in China and urge them on to even greater heights in the years to come.