Many predicted that the 2024 Summer Olympics were set to be the most successful yet for Ireland, and so it came to pass. 4 gold medals and a total medal count of 7 both set new records and there were plenty of close calls and athletes exceeding expectations too. There were also some disappointments. The preview posted before the start of the games will provide the framework for this end-of-Games review. We won’t go athlete-by-athlete but instead go sport-by-sport.
Athletics
A case of so near and yet so far with Rhasidat Adeleke in the 400m and with the women’s 4x400m relay. A second consecutive global 4th place for Rhasidat and she was clearly disconsolate at missing out again. Time is on her side though and she has four years as a professional ahead of her to stake a claim for the podium in LA. The women’s relay put on one of the all time best displays by any Irish team with career bests runs from all of them in a race that saw the top 5 all run national records, 4 of those being powerhouse nations. Athletics remains the hardest sport to win a medal in with all four corners of the globe producing world class athletes.
Of these rest, Nicola Tuthill (hammer) and Cathal Doyle (1,500m) were most happy with their results. Mark English and Sarah Lavin made semi finals with very good opening heats. Sophie O’Sullivan ran a PB in the 1,500m but couldn’t advance. Sarah Healy might have been the most disappointed with her performances in the same event. Kate O’Connor has had a couple of horror years with injuries so for her to finish the heptathlon in 12th was a good achievement. While others performed at/near expectations, we should mention Fionnuala McCormack finishing 28th in her third Olympic marathon, her 5th Olympics overall.
Badminton
As expected Nhat Nguyen won the two games he was ranked higher and lost to the defending champion Victor Axelesen of Denmark. Axelsen went on to win gold again without dropping a set. Rachael Darragh had match point in her opening game but she ended Paris without a win.
Boxing
Kellie Harrington was amazing throughout her 60kg campaign and defeated 3 world finalists on the way to defending her Olympic title. Her gold medal put a gloss on a disappointing tournament for Irish boxing with Jack Marley being the only other fighter to win a bout. Some, particularly Daina Moorehouse, felt they deserved a win but there’s no denying that the team as a whole underperformed.
Boxing’s power centre has shifted, with Asian countries winning 9 of the 13 gold medals on offer. Only 3 European countries won more than one medal, and that included hosts France who left with only 3 (and none of them gold). Uzbekistan won 5 of the 7 gold medals available to men. Perhaps we need to adjust the expectations we place on our boxers who perform well at European level.
Canoeing
Liam Jegou was close to a surprise medal in the C1 slalom event, more than justifying his controversial selection. The rest, including the Corcoran twins performed as expected with Noel Hendrick making a semi final but feeling disappointed.
Cycling
The cycling squad provide 5 top 12 performances and that’s a very decent return. Our track team continue to perform heroics without a velodrome. The women’s pursuit team were ninth, the madison du finished 11th and Lara Gillespie was 10th in the omnium. She was in with a shout of a medal before the points race too. Megan Armitage was prominent in the road race before the bigger nations took over. Ryan Mullen was 12th in the ITT before helping launch Ben Healy in the road race. Healy was very active and gave himself a chance of a medal before finishing in the group fighting for bronze. No medals for cycling, but an impressive showing.
Diving
Jake Passmore and Ciara McGing performed as per their ranking with McGing suffering illness just before she took part. While she may have not been happy with how it happened, she’s one of a handful of Irish Olympic divers now.
Equestrian
A case of what might have been for the Irish showjumping team. Qualifying in sith, a clear round from our third rider – Cian O’Connor – would have seen us win bronze. In the individual qualifiers, Ireland only had one fence down between the 3 riders (a result that would have seen them in a jump off for gold if they had perfumed to that level in the team final) before fading in the individual final. Danial Coyle had 3 clear rounds out of four but left the games empty handed. The medal winners in the individual event all had fewer clear rounds than him but they got the clear in the final and that’s all that matters.
In eventing, the Irish aversion to dressage punished them again. They were left with too big a mountain to climb and didn’t threaten the leaders. Abi Lyle was said to be delighted with her performance in the individual dressage.
Golf
A tournament to forget for 3 of our golfers and the 4th will try and block it out of his mind. Rory McIlroy put himself into position to challenge for medals before finding the water as he came into the final 4 holes of his tournament. He ended up in a for 5th to add to his 4th from Tokyo.
Gymnastics
Rhys McClenaghan, in a very crowded field, may be the best story from Team Ireland at the Paris Olympics. Heartbroken by a fall in Tokyo, he went to Paris a double world champion and gave the best performance of his life to secure Ireland’s first ever medal in Olympic gymnastics. The outpouring of emotion as he finished his routine told everybody what this performance meant to him. He was rewarded with a stunning gold, despite others performing superb routines before and after him. There is no margin of error in the pommel horse, and with all the pressure of a nation on his shoulders, Rhys delivered. An amazing moment in our sporting history.
Hockey
Ranked the lowest team in the games, it was nice for Ireland to finish their Olympics with a win over New Zealand. They were competitive in all the other pool games too.
Rowing
Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy cemented their legendary status by defending their Olympic title, with Paul becoming the first Irish Olympian to win medals in 3 Games. The lads from Cork were imperious throughout the regatta and swatted away their challengers with relative ease, despite what they may say in interviews. The heavyweight sculls of Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch won an excellent bronze medal for Irish rowing to repeat their performance from Tokyo.
With two more crews reaching their final, and all boats finishing in the top 10, it’s perhaps only the women’s pair of Aifric Keogh and Fiona Murtagh who’ll be disappointed with their 8th place overall finish. Most Irish crews had disrupted seasons, but O’Donovan and McCarthy proved the “class is permanent” idiom in Paris.
Rugby Sevens
The men’s team started the tournament with a win over a South African side that would go on to win bronze. Late, late defeats to New Zealand in the pools and then Fiji (eventual silver medal winners) in the quarter finals left the team thinking about “what ifs” for the medal play offs.
The women’s team ran Australia close in the pools before losing comprehensively in the quarter finals. They’ll have been annoyed with 2 losses to GB on their way to an 8th place finish.
Sailing
Another sport where Ireland leaves without a medal, but with 3 very impressive performances. Of course, coming so close to a medal there was disappointment for Waddilove and Dickson but 4th is their best result at a major championships so they can take great encouragement from it. Finn Lynch making the medal race in the ultra-competitive ILCA 7 laser category was a terrific result.
Eve McMahon was the youngest competitor in the ILCA 6 event and finished a very credible 13th. The gold medalist in Paris is 16 years older than her and was winning her 4th Olympic medal.
Taekwondo
Taekwondo is such a hard sport to evaluate. Jack Woolley lost his opening fight to the eventual silver medalist. He then had to wait around for 6 hours to try and fight in the repechage, where he lost to the 2nd seed. In both fights, Woolley acquitted him self well but he leaves Paris without a win in the Olympics for the second consecutive games.
Swimming
You might have noticed we swapped the alphabetical order there but we’ll finish on a high with swimming. Ellen Walshe made the final of the 400 IM and the semis in the 200 IM. Tom Fannon swam a national record in the 50m free and finished 10th in the semifinal rankings. Danielle Hill made the semis in the 100m back while both our medley relay teams swam new national records. If it was just that, Ireland would have had a successful swimming meet, but we haven’t even mentioned our medalists yet.
Mona McSharry kicked out the Irish medal rush with a superb bronze medal in the 100m backstroke. The Sligo woman from the University of Tennessee had been 5th in the previous two World Championships but her medal her medal win was still a surprise to many. She was never out of the top 3 in any of her swims but still only had 0.01s to spare ahead of two behind her.
Daniel Wiffen came into the Games talking a big game and he certainly delivered, producing a masterfully paced 800m to win gold in a new European and Olympic record. The big man from Larne turned on the after burners in the final 60m to pull away from Italy’s Paltrinair and stay ahead of the fast finishing Bobby Finke (USA). In the 1,500m later in the week, Finke won gold in a new world record with Wiffen having to “settle” for bronze. A spectacular return of 3 medals for Irish swimming.
In our preview we listed the 20 most likely medal winners. We didn’t have Mona McSharry mentioned but the top 4 all returned gold medals (albeit with Wiffen winning in 800m rather than 1,500m) so our biggest athletes turned up and performed on the biggest stage. The showjumping team will feel they should have won medals while our boxers, as a group, underperformed. After that we were in the hoping stage but with three 4th places and a host of top 10s we weren’t far away from even more medals. And who knows, like our previous record Games in 2012, we might get a medal from this Games in a few years too…
There has been plenty of plaudits for Ireland finishing 19th in the Olympic table, and they've all been deserved. It's also important that the medals are spread around different sports. Norway finished ahead of us by just a single silver medal, but they earned medals in 6 sports compared to our 4 (also a new record fwiw). Comparing us to relatively similarly sized European countries; Denmark won 9 medals, 2 gold in 8 sports, Croatia won 7 medals, 2 gold in 7 sports, Austria won 5, 2 gold in 3 sports, Switzerland won 8, 1 gold in 7 sports.
While it's nice seeing us listed with the big nations on certain days, these are the types of nations we should be comparing ourselves too and we've done well this year, relative to them.
