Jul 17, 2018
This day last week we wrote about the record-breaking achievements of young Irish athletes at the U18 European Championships. Seven days on and we can say the same of the next level up having secured a best-ever performance at the World U20 Championships in Finland.
There is a fresh energy about the Athletes competing this summer, doubtless feeding off each others success and building on the high-performance programme in place at home.
Ireland has never won a relay medal before but the team returning to Dublin from Helsinki will be led in led by a silver medal winning 100 Metre relay team of Molly Scott, Gina Akpe-Moses, Ciara Neville and Patience Jumbo-Gala. They will be followed by Sommer Lecky who came within an ace of setting a new Irish Senior record in securing silver in the High Jump at the age of only 17.
Yet again we can talk about the strength across the country with all five medal winners representing five different clubs.
The return doubles the number of medals that Ireland has ever won at this level and the relay team came incredibly close to overhauling the United States team to Gold with Great Britain back in third.
Added to the remarkable achievements of Sarah Healy, Rhasidat Adeleke and Sophie O’Sullivan the previous weekend it means we have eight young Irish women having secured three gold and six silver medals at the pinnacle of their sport and their age over the past eight days.
Records also tumbled at the Irish Life Health National Juvenile Track and Field Championships in Tullamore in what is an unprecedented period of sustained and deep promise for the sport in Ireland.
Jul 16, 2018
Irish rowers Paul and Gary O’Donovan won gold in the final of the men’s lightweight double sculls at World Rowing Cup III in Lucerne, Switzerland at the weekend while teammate Sanita Puspure added to Ireland’s recent medal rush on the global stage taking silver in the women’s single sculls.
The Olympic silver medal-winning brothers from Skibbereen Rowing Club crossed the line 0.8 of a second ahead of the Belgium crew and Denmark in a nail-biting finish to their race.
“It was a pretty good race,” said O’Donovan speaking to media after the event.
“Denmark took over for a while but then we swapped. We managed to throw ourselves over the finish line in first.”
The Brothers will compete for Ireland in the lightweight men’s double at the European Championships in Scotland over the August bank holiday weekend.
Puspure was up against world champion Jannine Gmelin of Switzerland and a strong field in her final leading in the first 500m but just beaten out for Gold by 0.23 of a second by the world champion, Gmelin.
“I’m happy enough but in the end,” she told Cork’s Red FM.
“It was so close that it would have been nice to have come back with a gold as well and to have had two golds for the team would have been awesome, but not this time. We still have the World Championships ahead of us so, hopefully.”
“This has been a fantastic weekend for Irish rowing,” said Rowing Ireland CEO Michelle Carpenter.
“We’ve had an amazing three days here in Cork with the 2018 Irish Rowing Championships, where some new course records have been set by our younger rowers, and to see our senior athletes winning medals on the international stage at World Cup level is a fantastic achievement and a huge inspiration.
Jul 9, 2018
Irish athletics celebrated its best ever performance at a major championship over the weekend with three gold medals and one silver lifting us to seventh place overall on the Medals Table at the European U18 Championships in Hungary.
Gold medals for Sarah Healy in the 3000 and 1500 metre events were the highlight not only of the irish team but the entire event with blistering performances to leave two high quality fields training in her wake.
Rhasidat Adeleke brought home another gold in the 200 metres while Sonia O’Sullivan was on hand to present a silver medal to her daughter Sophie in the *00 metres final on Saturday night.
The wins are a celebration of the huge work that each of the athletes has put in and holds out the promise of what potential there is in the current young crop of runners.
The coverage in Irish media this morning has been very strong with each of the Irish Independent, Irish Times and Irish Examiner running major stories on the athletes and their success.
Cathal Dennehy writing in the Independent says: “Right now, her options seem endless, but if there’s one principle that’s worked for Healy to date it’s Leonardo da Vinci’s line about simplicity being the ultimate sophistication. With a talent so great, there’s a temptation to reach for unhelpful comparisons with past prodigies, but that does a disservice to an athlete setting out on a journey that could end just about anywhere.”
Ian O’Riordan in the Irish Times also placed the performance in the wider context of multi-sport particiaption and Ireland’s multicultural background.
It is hoped that Healy will race at the Morton Games in Santry next Friday night, giving Irish athletics fans another opportunity to see her burgeoning talent.
She will not race at the Senior European Championships however as she has the Leaving Cert to prepare for next year and will be at Irish College while the games are on.
Athletics Ireland deserves credit for ensuring that the story of these winners and the performances of their 23 strong team were relayed back to home via a smart social media presence led by Feidhlim Kelly.
The importance of telling the story and making the news available in real time was picked up by all the mainstream media and indeed by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar who was sending his congratulations last night.
The meeting was covered on live streaming with highlights on Eurosport enabling RTÉ to feature the exploits as part of its main news bulletins but having the base level of content available was important on what was an incredibly busy sporting weekend.
This is a rare group of talented athletes. It was Ireland’s best ever performance at a major Championships at any age level and promises much for the future so long as the various hurdles from youth to senior can be navigated but they have already achieved more on the European stage than most can ever dream of.
In that alone, they will have inspired many to go out for that late run when their legs are aching and there is always something else that holds an appeal.
The Irish Life sponsored National Juvenile Championships will take place in Tullamore next weekend with many more runners looking to see what they can do, against their own previous bests, and hoping to follow in the footsteps of those who have led the way these past three days.
Image Credit: Oisin Kenneiy, Inpho.ie
Jul 9, 2018
Ireland scored its best ever performance on the International Gymnastics stage this weekend with Andrew Smith, Adam Steele and Rhys McClenaghan qualifying for no fewer than 6 apparatus finals at the 2018 World Challenge Cup in Mersin, Turkey.
The highlight was Rhys McClenaghan’s gold medal-winning routine on Pommel-Horse but it is the growing strength in depth that perhaps bodes even better for the future of the sport here.
Having gone from one Olympian in London to two in Rio, and now the promise of more, the investment in time and energy that Gymnastics Ireland is making, as well as the added impetus of using the Sport Ireland National indoor Arena to such good effect is clearly making a difference
“This is the best-ever performance by an Irish delegation at a FIG World Cup Event, 6 finals between 3 gymnasts and a gold medal gives us all so much to be proud of in Gymnastics Ireland,” said Ciaran Gallagher, CEO for the national governing body.
“While it was a superb achievement for Adam and Andrew to qualify for finals, their performances throughout both qualification and the finals themselves demonstrate they are both capable of podium finishes on the World Cup Circuit.”
“For Rhys another World Cup Pommel Champion title to his name and further evidence that he is one of the Worlds best on this apparatus.”
“The Irish team has made history with all three gymnasts qualifying in six finals,” added Gymnastics Ireland Performance and Technical manager Sally Johnston speaking from Turkey.
“Special congratulations to Adam making four finals and a personal best on the floor.”
Andrew Smith, Adam Steele and Rhys McClenaghan have all been selected for the European Championships in August and World Championships in October so their exploits in the international spotlight are not over yet.
The European Championships take place in Berlin during the first week in August.
Jul 2, 2018
The Olympic Council of Ireland is to make €200,000 of funding grants available across 16 sports to assist with Olympic focused projects.
The grants are being made available to member National Governing Bodies with €20,000 going to Boxing, Cycling, Horse Sport, Rowing, Sailing and Swimming.
€10,000 in grants will go to Badminton, Judo, Ladies Golf, Rugby and Taekwondo with lesser amounts for Athletics, Basketball, Soccer, Hockey and Triathlon.
This allocation marks the first year of the programme, the purpose of which is to support specific Olympic based projects and programmes in addition to the scholarship programmes and funding that the OCI provides to support athletes and teams to compete in Olympic events.
The Discretionary Funding was aimed at providing support for projects across three main areas of development support, supprt in performance coaching and projects under a ‘Make a Difference banner.
Each application was reviewed and marked in line with weighted criteria set out as part of the application process, with direct correlation from scoring to funding.
A five-person review panel chaired by Chief Executive Officer of the Olympic Council of Ireland, Peter Sherrard, with Independent and Sport Ireland members, assessed and scored the applications before presenting these applications to a four-person sub-group from the OCI Executive Committee, which was independent to any of the applications.
“The number of applications clearly showed that there is a big need for increased funding for sport,” said Sherrard.
“This is being expressed by National Governing Bodies across the board. While the OCI support fund is relatively small, its targeted funding is intended to top-up or leverage existing high-performance funding going to NGB’s from Sport Ireland and other sources.”
“We intend to maintain this initiative next year and will continue to work closely with our member sports, their High-Performance programmes and athletes as we move through the Olympic cycle.”
The OCI received 34 applications from 22 sports, 10 for Performance Coach Support, 15 for Make a Difference Projects, and 9 for Olympic Development Support, for a combined total funding request of €800,000.
19 of the 34 applications were supported with grants ranging from €5,000 to €20,000 per National Governing Body. The Committee has contacted the 22 National Governing Bodies which applied to give feedback on the applications or to discuss implementation and planning for each of the projects.
Due to a specific Youth Olympic Games focus, the OCI will also be supporting Gymnastics Ireland and Tennis Ireland with Olympic Solidarity funding that they are eligible for.
The background to some of the specific projects which are aimed at helping Irish athletes maximise their potential will be featured in the coming months across the OCI’s web and social channels as they move towards implementation.
Jun 27, 2018
Meetings of influencers looking to contribute ideas on the next stage of development for Women in Sport in Ireland have been taking place across the country over the past few weeks.
The National Indoor Arena at the National Sports Campus was the first venue for around 50 leaders from the wider world of sport at NGB, local authority, sport Ireland and media level to talk, listen, share and perhaps inspire ‘what next’.
This was followed by events in Limerick and Sligo and one for younger girls to contribute their thoughts back at Abbottstown this week.
Sport Ireland has commissioned Clansult and SOS Sports, led respectively by Lisa Clancy and Sarah O’Shea to produce a report looking at what can be done.
There is an online survey which has now gone live and we would urge you to engage and have your say. You can access the survey here.
They are taking in information from best practice around the world and looking at how advances can be made in terms of governance, leadership, performance, coaching, influencing and other key areas ahead of a report to be published in the Autumn.
There will be no magic bullet solution. A quick shout out of positives and negatives at the start of the first session showed that we have a good understanding of the landscape in its broadest sense but it is in drilling down through specifics that trends will emerge.
In order to make progress, you have to be fully aware of where you are at any given moment.
This new initiative, under the heading of #WeAreSport promises to discover that and to draw a map of where we go to next. It’s important to do it, and important to get it right.
