John Joe Nevin was one of Ireland's 4 boxing medals
Gavin Cooney
Staff Writer
If you are first you are first, if you are second you are nowhere.
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Bill Shankly
Top level sport is ruthless. The Olympic Games is the highest level of sport, and while there is a magical quality attached to the ‘Olympian’ moniker, the games are ultimately about winning medals. This article will offer the argument that Ireland should invest the bulk of their money in boxing and a couple of other sports, rather than spread it across a multitude of sports.
The phrase that “it’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts” rings truer for the Olympic games than any other competition. The glory attached to turning up and competing in the games is unlike any other competition. Not even the Olympiad, however, is taking part the most prominent theme. As wonderful as it is to see Irish athletes in minority sports given one major day in the sun, in the harsh world of results, it is close to irrelevant. Those who don’t medal write no script, they leave no legacy. They have no lavish homecomings, they have no civic receptions. Take Rob Heffernan, who heroically took fourth place in the men’s 50k walk in a time that would have taken silver in Beijing and gold in every other Olympics before that. On Monday, Katie Taylor returned home to thousands of fans on the streets of Bray. Belfast and Mullingar were similarly thronged, as locals turned out to catch a glimpse at those shiny, Olympic medals hanging from the necks of Paddy Barnes, Michael Conlan and John Joe Nevin. Heffernan was forced to take a public bus back to Cork from the airport, before a local taxi fare spotted a some free advertising and agreed to collect him.
While the glory of competing in the Olympics should not be diminished, sport is about leaving a legacy, setting a good example and inspiring the next generation to strive to be the best that they can be. It is exceedingly difficult to do this without winning medals. There was the same sense of achievement for all Irish athletes competing in Athens 2004 as there were for the Irish sportspeople in London 2012. Athens, however, will forever be remembered as a shambolic failure, as Ireland (eventually) ended up without a medal. London 2012 on the other hand will be fondly revered as a glorious couple of weeks where all that glittered was one gold, one silver and three bronze medals. Athens and London both featured Irish athletes achieving great things by qualifying for the games, yet only one of those games will stand the inexorable and ruthless judgement of history. Ultimately, we brought something home from London. We left Athens with nothing.
If Rio 2016 is to become another Irish sporting epoch, it will require a sharpened focus by the Irish Sports Council. They should analyse the performances of the various sports across these games, and zone in on those that Ireland can realistically medal in. The obvious sport to focus on is boxing, which has become our Olympic forte. Boxing’s High Performance System received €755,000 in funding from the Irish Sports Council this year, while athletics received a superior €885,000. In terms of individual grants, David Gillick received €40,000. Michael Conlan received €20,000. Gillick’s performances at the 400m this year ranked him eighth in Ireland. His poor performances have been down to injuries, but the fact that Michael Conlan stood on a podium with a grant half of what an athlete sitting in Montrose received is baffling. Seventeen athletes received a total of €348,000 in high-performance funding this year, only Heffernan managed a top ten finish. Katie Taylor has become the greatest female boxer in the world and “shocked the world” without a toilet in her gym. There were no athletic medals won. There were four boxing medals won. Ireland’s boxers have showed what is possible with reasonable funding across the past nine years, with a total return of more than 70 medals in competitions like the European and World Championships and the Olympic Games. The performances in the ring in London put them on par with Cuba and Ukraine and ahead of the likes of USA and China.
I am not proposing cutting all funding to every sport except boxing. What I do propose is that boxing receives the highest proportion of funding. The next highest level of funding should go to another sport in which we can realistically medal in. An example would be equestrian. Horse Sport Ireland had its funding cut by 7% this year, yet Cian O Connor still won a bronze medal. One wonders of the possibilities open to the likes of O Connor should the sport receive more money. The basis for the ranking of the sports should be Ireland’s performances in major competitions like the Olympics, and World and European competitions.
Great Britain have done exactly this, learning from Atlanta 1996 where they won a single gold medal. They pumped funding into sports in which they can dominate. They spent over 30 million euro on their cyclists for London 2012 and similar amounts on their rowers. As a result, the bulk of their 29 medals were won in the velodrome and on the water at Eton Dorney.
The Irish Sports Council is still falling victim to the archaic practice of funnelling money into traditional sports in which medals are unrealistic targets. Ireland have won two medals on the track since 1956. This year in the ring, we won four in a week. Realistically Ireland’s best medal hopes in four years are boxers. Top level sport is ruthless. History is written by the winners. Even if it is awkward to write with a boxing glove on, it is Ireland’s boxers that have been the authors in Beijing and London. While taking part in the Olympics has its obvious and beautiful virtues, what really matters is winning. If boxing gets the majority of funding for Rio, there will be more history, more legacies, and more medals.
