Olympic Withdrawals

IN ALL FAIRNESS

The best indicator of how much you have enjoyed something is that you miss it when it is gone, over, finished. That is how I felt on Monday night when there was no Olympic Games to watch on the television. It might have just been a nineteen day event (unofficially started on July 24th despite the Opening Ceremony being on the 26th) but it was so good it felt like it went on for much longer that you wondered, what did I do with my evenings before it?

It’s the first time I can remember feeling that way about a sporting event, and I get the sense many are the same, not just here in Ireland, but around the world as the Olympic Games reasserted itself as the pre-eminent sporting event of them all.

It had come under pressure, particularly with the growth of soccer and its almost all year round calendar. That could come to hurt soccer in the coming years in that there is so much of it, it is losing its special quality. For many, the Premier League in England is the focus for most soccer fans (sorry to the hardcore LOI fans) but how many of you are actually excited about the start of the new season next weekend, as it only feels like the last one just ended, admittedly with the Euro’s only finishing around a month ago.

That is why the Olympics will continue to remain the most special event as it only happens every four years in terms of its Summer Games with the Winter Games on a similar cycle with the next one being in Milan-Cortina in February 2026.

For the vast majority of athletes, the four year cycle to an Olympic Games is how they plan their lives, and everything is about peaking for that, and when the hype subsides in the coming weeks, the focus will shift to LA in 2028, and the colour of their closing ceremony handover on Sunday night will have ignited a fire in them and spectators alike to plan to be on the West coast of the United States in four years’ time.

One has always speculated as to how important the Olympic Games are for professional sportspeople, particularly in events such as golf, tennis, and basketball, who don’t see the Olympics as the pinnacle of their chosen sport.

It was so heartening to see record major winner in tennis Novak Djokovic describe winning a gold medal in the men’s singles as his greatest achievement. Scottie Scheffler turned up in Paris thinking the men’s golf was like another tour event, but he ended up in tears on the podium after winning gold, something he didn’t do when presented with the green jacket for winning the Masters earlier this year. He is a multi-millionaire, so it was great to see a sportsman get the thrill of winning, not just for himselves, but also for their country.

It was the same for his US basketball teammates. International basketball has always been a poorer relation to the NBA where how much you earn in salary is seen as more important that what you achieve on the court. This year, the US had another star-studded squad and one wondered how much it would matter if their status of being the best was threatened, and we saw it in the semi-final against Serbia when they came from seventeen points down, and then in the final against an excellent France team.

Winning an NBA championship is the elite in basketball, but it was brilliant to see how much it meant to the likes of Steph Curry and Lebron James, who have won numerous of those titles, to win an Olympic gold medal, where unless they win the tournament, don’t get any financial reward, and in the US where money means more than anything else, it was great to see achievement trump it on a rare occasion.

The United States finished top of the medals table with 126 and winning so many, some great achievements among those can be lost. That is why any time Ireland win medals, a record seven this year, is always cherished, as those that win them will never be forgotten.

Paul O’Donovan, Fintan McCarthy and Kellie Harrington are now atop of Ireland’s Mount Rushmore of Olympians having retained their titles, with O’Donovan out on his own with his silver medal won in 2016. Whose to say he won’t target another in LA, even in a new weight class, as he is such a competitor, and was already preparing for the World Rowing Championships in Canada later this month when the homecoming was taking place in Dublin on Monday last.

The athletics team might not have returned with a medal, but they won the hearts of the public with their performances, including our own Sharlene Mawdsley who again performed with the world’s best in the relay, but was jusr edged out in the final. She has shown in the past that she can use the fuel from disappointment to improve, and if she does there is no reason why she hasn’t peaked yet.