ALL HAIL LIGHTNING BOLT
We were thrilled by Katie’s gold and stunned by Smith’s dominance but when it comes to our Olympic No 1...
10 THE FALL OF HICKEY
PAT HICKEY was the most powerful Olympic figure in Irish sport, more influential than any medallist.
And he often gave the impression of revelling in that power, becoming embroiled in spats with athletes, politicians and administrative rivals over the years — and always emerging victorious. However, his rule came to an astonishing end on the morning of August 17, 2016.
What had been a tumultuous Games for Ireland became an international sensation as footage emerged of a police raid on his hotel room.
The arrest was over allegations of ticket touting, and would lead to Hickey spending months under house arrest in Rio.
He also stood down from his various roles of influence within the International Olympic Committee and the then-Olympic Council of Ireland.
The scandal eventually brought an end to his decades-long rule over the Irish Olympic movement, but the repercussions of the story, and the clean-up operation, cost hundreds of thousands and led to a clear-out at the governing body.
It was what Irish Olympians had long demanded and it was desperately needed.
The pity was that it entirely overshadowed the achievements of the O’Donovan brothers and Annalise Murphy, as the 2016 Olympics became forever associated with his arrest and the extraordinary footage released by the Brazilian police of his arrest.
9 SONIA’S REDEMPTION
NOW this is what Irish Olympic power should look like.
There was a time when it looked as if perhaps the most gifted athlete ever to wear an Irish singlet would end her career without an Olympic medal.
After the trauma of Atlanta, the fear was that O’Sullivan’s time had passed.
In the mid-1990s, she was an international standard-setter, and the danger was that Sydney in 2000 was a challenge too far.
That, of course, was to reckon without the capacity for endurance of the woman.
Physically, her ability to withstand hours of training was important, but it was her mental endurance that brought her silver 20 years ago.
She had come fourth in the 3000m in Barcelona, then came the disaster in Atlanta, before she lined up in the final of the 5000m on a warm September night in a stadium far beyond the outskirts of Sydney.
The place was full that night, over 110,000 in attendance for a schedule that featured nine finals.
O’Sullivan absorbed all the Irish interest. She was two months away from her 31st birthday, edging towards veteran status and with a decade of high-class racing absorbed.
Less than 1500m into this race, it looked as if another Olympic medal was in danger of passing her by, as she slipped to the back of a field led by Gabriela Szabo, a rival of many years’ standing.
But O’Sullivan moved through the competition until, with 600m to go, it was her and the Romanian in competition for gold.
Szabo edged it by less than a quarter of a second as O’Sullivan set a national record of 14:41.02.
Five days later, she broke another Irish record in coming sixth in the 10,000m, but it was the silver that counted. Finally, Sonia O’Sullivan had proof of her brilliance on the biggest stage of them all.
8 THE PERFECT JUMP
BOB BEAMON redefined athletics with the most astonishing feat in the history of the sport. And so shocked was he by his worldrecord 8.90m long jump at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico that he collapsed next to the sand pit with a bout of nausea.
To put what he did in context, the record had been broken 13 times since 1901 and never by more than 15cm; Beamon beat it by 55cm. For the first time in history, the 28-foot mark had been passed; for that matter, so had 29 feet.
The distance was so vast that the measurement equipment in the stadium was insufficient for the task, so a new tape had to be called in.
The record came from the perfect alignment of circumstances: the altitude was 2,240m, the tailwind was the maximum permitted of two metres per second and Beamon held the No 2 distance in history at that point with 8.33m.
With his first jump Beamon obliterated the 8.35m mark held jointly by Igor Ter-Ovanesyan and Ralph Boston. It was 23 years before Mike Powell broke the world record.
7 MUNICH
THE terror attack at the Munich Games of 1972 remains one of the most startling and devastating episodes in the history of sport.
Eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team and staff, as well as a German police officer, were killed after being taken hostage by terrorists from the Palestinian group Black September.
In a case of enduring shame for the Olympic Games, the competition went on only 34 hours after the massacre.
6 DELANY’S MELBOURNE MAGIC
RONNIE DELANY was a gifted runner from youth, good enough to go to Villanova University in Pennsylvania on a scholarship.
There, he came under the guidance of a legendary athletics coach called Jumbo Elliott, and it was Elliott who turned him from the 800m to the 1500m.
On the evening of December 1, 1956, Delany was not fancied to take gold. Nobody was but local favourite John Landy.
Delany was tenth on the back straight but by the final turn had begun his charge. He picked off the field until he charged clear, winning in a new Olympic record.
The news reached Irish breakfast tables, the country’s first gold since 1932 and its first, and still only, track and field medal.
5 MICHELLE SMITH
SHE remains, officially, a threetime Olympic gold medallist, the first Irish woman to win gold. But Michelle Smith’s feats were considered incredible, in the very precise sense of that word, before the Atlanta Olympics had finished. The improvements in her times from 1994 onwards, under the training of her husband, Erik de Bruin, a discus thrower banned for four years in 1993 for failing a doping test, were phenomenal, as she destroyed national records.
She won her first gold in Atlanta in the 400m individual medley. Her second came in the 400m freestyle, and it was after that victory that Janet Evans, a multi-decorated American superstar, described Smith’s performances as ‘questionable’. Smith’s winning time was an 18-second improvement on what she had managed in 1995.
Evans became an instant hate figure in Ireland, but the rumours only grew, the suspicions gathered in thicker clouds, following her third gold in the 200m individual medley.
Her fourth medal was bronze in the 200m butterfly.
She returned to a hero’s welcome, but it wasn’t universal. A handful of Irish journalists questioned her achievements, and unease grew thereafter.
In August 1998, Smith was banned for four years for tampering with a sample taken in January of that year. The testers had reported a strong smell of whiskey from it.
She appealed, her ban was upheld, and Smith retired from swimming. She continued to maintain her innocence, and is still in the record books as a three-time Olympic gold medallist. Her advocates insist she is a champion.
But for others, she is the most controversial figure in Irish Olympic history.
4 TAYLOR’S DREAM COME TRUE
LET’S be clear. Irish athletes have won medals in tougher fields. Women’s boxing was new to the Olympics in 2012, and Katie Taylor was the outstanding favourite to win lightweight gold.
Nonetheless, her victory was one of the outstanding moments in Irish sport.
That is because Taylor was adored by the Irish public long before the unforgettable afternoon in London in which she defeated Sofya Ochigava and waited, and waited, for the judges to announce who had taken gold.
Taylor was loved – still is – because she was humble and shy and a brilliant example of what can be achieved. She is the little girl who wanted to box, and who, despite all the obstacles, did so. She dreamed of an Olympic medal and through her talent, became one of the most obvious cases for the inclusion of women’s boxing at the Games. Taylor was — and remains — a brilliant role model for girls and young women, proof that dedication and application can bring glory that for decades, women were conditioned to believe could only be the preserve of men. Katie Taylor proved them all wrong. During those warm weeks in London, she was sensational.
3 ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD
WITH his eyes bulging and yellow, Ben Johnson set fire to the 100m world record at the 1988 Games. Three days later, he torched his entire sport.
Has athletics ever truly recovered from the discovery of steroids in his urine? Has more harm ever been done to a sport that relies so heavily on people believing what they are seeing?
It would not be accurate to call Johnson a trailblazer in the realms of cheating at games and pursuits. History records Eupolus from Thessaly bribing his boxing opponents to lose as far back as 388 BC and thousands have cut corners since, many as cogs in statesponsored machines.
But maybe, through name and stage and place and time, Johnson caused the single biggest explosion of the myth of fair play. Maybe, more than anyone else, he is the reason why when you watch an event as marvellous as the Olympics, it is that bit harder to feel a sense of wonder when something amazing happens.
2 JESSE’S SUPREMACY
IT is 84 years old, but what Jesse Owens did in Berlin in 1936 remains the most significant feat in Olympic history.
It is proof that beyond the cheating and the cynicism, brilliance and decency can still win out.
There cannot have been a more culturally significant episode in sporting history than what played out when Owens, as a black athlete, went to Berlin and made a nonsense of Hitler’s hateful idea of Aryan supremacy.
In seven days at those Games, Owens won the 100m, 200m, long jump and 4x100m relay and achieved an athletic feat that would not be matched until Carl Lewis came along in 1984.
That Hitler is said to have snubbed Owens in victory was dismissed as a myth by Owens himself. By contrast, US president Franklin D Roosevelt never invited him to the White House. But the greatness of Owens and the importance of his role in defying the most hateful regime in modern history don’t need any political validation. Athletically, he was a legend. Morally, he was an inspiration – and must rank as the greatest Olympian of them all.
1 THE GAMES’ SAVIOUR
OUT of the suspicion and the apathy and the fading grandeur of the Olympics came that yellow and green blur and a personality that was twice as bright.
What Usain Bolt started at the 2008 Games in Beijing, and continued through two more at London and Rio, not only restored the old church but put a bit of faith back into it.
Has there ever been a sharper marriage of talent and character? If cheating was the poison, then Bolt was at least the hope of a cure, kicking off with that astonishing appearance in Beijing.
He was the 100m world-record holder by the time he got to China but it says everything about the speed of his emergence that the 21-year-old Jamaican had set that mark of 9.72sec in only his fifth senior race at the distance, two months before the Games.
When he arrived in Beijing, his profile outside athletics was limited and Michael Phelps was already seven golds deep by the Saturday of the 100m final.
What came next is the stuff of legend. On a belly full of chicken nuggets — he would later explain he was eating 100 a day — Bolt danced on the start line, then unfurled that lanky frame from the blocks and covered 100m in a barely believable 9.69sec. He took 41 strides to become the quickest man in history (mortals take around 45) and when he was done he struck a pose that has become famous all over the world.
He went on in those Games to break Michael Johnson’s world record in the 200m, then won the 4x100m gold (later stripped as a team-mate doped) and a further six Olympic golds across 2012 and 2016 before his retirement.
He is the greatest sprinter ever and quite possibly the greatest Olympian; a man who had a golden touch for any company that hired him (Virgin reported a 2.4 per cent rise in revenue after taking him on, Puma 10 per cent) and sporting success like few others.
He arrived at a time when the Olympics badly needed a hero. Now that he has gone, there is a vacancy that needs filling.