GOLDEN MOMENT FROM CARRUTH SETS THE SPARK FOR IRELAND’S BOXING SUCCESS
PART 4: 20-11 20 THE GOLDEN TOUCH
WAS the greatest haul of gold in the history of the Olympics built on a faulty touchpad? Or should we simply accept that what looked so clear was not what it seemed, and that Michael Phelps really did win the 100m butterfly in Beijing?
The books record that it was his seventh gold, equalling what Mark Spitz achieved in 1972, and his subsequent victory in the 4x100m medley had him all alone on eight, the most prolific champion of a single Games.
Over the course of his remarkable career, Phelps would amass a barely believable 23 gold medals but no Games were as bountiful as 2008 and no race as baffling as that 100m butterfly.
Milorad Cavic had laid the groundwork and riled Phelps by saying it would ‘be nice if historians talk about Michael Phelps winning seven gold medals and losing the eighth to some guy’.
Maybe the Serbian was that guy. Most angles show he touched first, but Phelps was given gold by 0.01sec.
Did Cavic fail to apply enough pressure to the touchpad? Or was it something more sinister — one theory pointed to Phelps’s sponsor connections to the official timekeeper Omega.
Or maybe a swimmer who defied all logic also defied the laws of sight. An Olympic mystery wrapped in history.
19 PULL LIKE A DOG
THEY joked and laughed and acted the maggot when the cameras were turned on, but the O’Donovan brothers were deadly serious about their rowing.
It was a rank Friday morning in Rio when the final of the men’s lightweight double sculls was held. The statue of Christ the Redeemer that rose high above the rowing venue was fogged by a thick mist, but out of the gloom emerged a couple of brothers from west Cork.
Paul and Gary O’Donovan were world-class competitors by the time they got to Rio, and anyone with even a passing familiarity with rowing understands the ferocious physical and mental commitment involved.
But they wore the effort of their exertions very lightly, brushing off any technical details and shrugging that they just pulled like dogs when they got into the boat.
The memory lingers of the postrace press conference when they left a roomful of rowing specialists by turns befuddled and in convulsions of laughter.
Appearances on British chat shows followed their Olympic silver, but none of it should mask the magnitude of their achievements. They were brilliant — and blazing bright spots in what was an often miserable Olympics for Ireland.
18 THE GOLDEN PASS
IT was arguably the most contentious final ever fought at an Olympic Games.
The context to the 1972 basketball showdown between the USA and the USSR was the Cold War, with the added fact that the Americans were on one of the greatest streaks in sporting history.
Even without their NBA stars owing to amateurism, they held an Olympic record of 63 matches, 63 wins, seven gold medals.
But in a match that was already super-charged with political undertones, they somehow lost in the most ludicrously controversial of ways, having led 50-49 with three seconds to play after two free throws. It started with the USSR attempting a rapid break to save the game. But then it was stopped with a second remaining, as the Russian coaches, angered that they had not been granted a timeout between those free throws, were remonstrating. For reasons still unclear, the clock was reset to three seconds and the Russians attempted the restart with a pass the length of the court to Alexander Belov, which missed. Again, the Americans thought they had won only to learn the Russians launched the play while the clock was being reset. It went to three seconds again and this time the heave to Belov worked and the USSR had the gold. The Americans would refuse to accept their silver medals.
17 GAMES SALUTE
AT a time of enormous racial discord in the US, two of their finest athletes stood on a podium and gave their salute.
The stark truth is that 52 years after Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists in Mexico, the injustices they were highlighting still exist.
It was Smith, the winner of the 200m ahead of bronze medallist Carlos, who so eloquently said in his press conference: ‘If I win I am an American, not a black American. But if I did something bad then they would say “a Negro”. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight.’
The reaction of the IOC? On the directive of their long-reigning president Avery Brundage, a man alleged to have a diverse range of prejudices, Smith and Carlos were expelled from the Games.
16 SAIL ON SILVER GIRL
ON a quayside in Weymouth in 2012, Annalise Murphy cried and cried. She was 22 years of age and prior to the London Games, she was not familiar to those beyond the sport of sailing.
But the Dubliner almost won a medal in the laser radial class. She started the final day of sailing in second place, and some outlets were reporting that she had claimed bronze. But she missed out, finished in fourth and was so upset that she couldn’t do media interviews afterwards.
She recovered to come back four years later and take silver, ensuring her story was one of those classic — but so rare — accounts of heartbreak and then resolution.
Murphy’s achievement was sandwiched by two sensational events: the day before, Katie Taylor lost and the day after, Pat Hickey was arrested. But in the midst of those astonishing 72 hours, Murphy got her reward.
15 TREACY’S LA HEROICS
FOOTAGE from the 1984 Olympic men’s marathon is exhausting to view. The heat that baked those Games can almost be felt through the screen as you watch John Treacy maintain control to pull clear of Britain’s Charlie Spedding and take silver, behind the winner Carlos Lopes of Portugal. The race is considered one of the great marathons of all time, and Treacy’s feat is all the more commendable when it is recalled that he competed in the 10,000m five days earlier. He said afterwards that he would definitely compete in the marathon, which caused surprise given the intensity of the heat. His decision was justified and Treacy ran a brilliant race, sticking with the pack before ensuring he was part of a four-man breakaway group.
When Lopes struck for home, Treacy tried to keep up before falling back and ensuring he finished ahead of Spedding instead.
The race has another Irish element worth noting: Jerry Kiernan finished ninth and Dick Hooper was 51st.
14 SPIKES OF GOLD
IT is an accepted wisdom that the Atlanta Games of 1996 were a stinker, from an Irish and international perspective.
The Games were rotten from the bidding process that won them to the shambolic transport system that brought the show to regular and lengthy halts once they started.
But if there was a high point it was Michael Johnson. That straight back, those furious legs, those shining spikes. Indeed, there was once a conversation, before Usain Bolt came and went, which pondered how athletics might survive once Michael Johnson
had left. Quite aside from the fact he became the only man in history to win the 200m and 400m at the same Games, it is the nature of his win in the 200m that deserves most attention.
By crossing the finish line in 19.32sec, he cut an enormous three-tenths of a second off the world record he had set on the same track in the US trials a month earlier.
It was a feat that deserves comparison with Bob Beamon’s record-crushing long jump in the 1968 Olympics.
13 SAY IT AIN’T SO, FLO
FLO JO was the athlete who passed away in her sleep aged 38, but whose world records may never be beaten.
And that, of course, is the very reason why their legitimacy will always be questioned.
Florence Griffith Joyner has a bizarre story, and it arguably peaked with the 200m at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
It is necessary at this point to go back to 1986. Griffith Joyner, the Olympic 200m silver medallist and a woman with no great interest in the 100m, gave up on athletics.
She spent most of the next year working as a bank clerk and hairdresser before returning a stone overweight in April 1987. Somehow that provided the launchpad for a series of performances in the next 15 months that still defy logic.
The true breakthrough came at the US Olympic trials in 1988, when Griffith Joyner, with a 10.96sec, 100m personal best that was five years old, ran 10.49sec in the quarter-final.
She took 0.27sec off the world record that day and her time remains 0.15sec quicker than the next fastest woman in history.
She would go on to win the Olympic 100m gold at a canter in a wind-assisted 10.54sec, but the performance in the 200m in Seoul was more staggering. In the semifinal she beat a world record held by an East German by 0.15sec and two hours later she shaved off a further 0.22sec.
Her time was 21.34sec. For a little perspective, the next quickest in history is 21.62sec by the disgraced drugs cheat Marion Jones.
12 CARRUTH THE CHAMP
BEFORE high performance units, before the glories of Beijing and London when boxing was Ireland’s saviour, there was Barcelona.
Wayne McCullough took silver in the bantamweight division, but the unforgettable moment came with Michael Carruth’s gold as a welterweight.
This, it is important to note, was a time of modest achievement by Ireland at the Olympics.
Nor were there the systems in place, with the levels of support, that transformed Irish boxing at the Olympics two decades later.
Carruth was a triplet, one of ten children, and his late father Austin was in his corner throughout his Olympic dream.
He was a soldier when he won his medal but later turned professional. Fame and fortune did not come his way in the pro game, and Carruth has spoken with admirable candour about the challenge of adapting to life after sport.
Irish boxing has been utterly transformed since the Saturday morning he bounded around the ring in Barcelona, but he remains the last Irishman to win a gold medal in the ring.
11 LEWIS CATCHES OWENS
IT was victory as part of the 4x100m relay in 1984 that won Carl Lewis his fourth gold of the Games, and therefore saw him match Jesse Owens’ historic contribution to Berlin 1936.
While his reputation has been undermined by subsequent doping revelations, there can be no doubt that the winner of nine golds spanning four Games is one of the best athletes in history.
His peak was clearly 1984, when he won the 100m in 9.99sec before he took his first of four long jump gold medals and then claimed the 200m in an Olympic record 19.80sec.
He wrapped up the quadruple by anchoring the US team to a world record in the 4x100m.
His positive tests in 1988, which didn’t come to light until years later, have hurt his name as much as they hurt the sport.