Guts, glory and stench of scandal in Rio
ON WEDNESDAY morning, Copacabana beach was hidden by rain. Thick grey cloud hung low, and the most famous sand in the world was thick and wet and concealed behind showers that fell like neglected net curtains. It was cold even by Brazilian winter standards, with temperatures in the mid-teens. But as we drove on the beach, walkers and runners moved in clothing dreamt up for summer and warmer days.
Many of the people of Rio, its middle classes to be precise, are obsessed with their appearance. Living in a good climate has contributed to a culture that is second only to the US in what it spends on cosmetic surgery, and which invented the eye-wateringly tight trunks used by too many men.
This is an open place. Geographically it is vast but socially the people are friendly and accommodating. Secrecy would not be automatically associated with such a society, but appearances are misleading. Behind the Carmen Miranda hats and the clichés about samba and carnival is a complicated, conflicted country with huge social problems and a political scandal that could lead to the impeachment of a president already suspended from duty.
Nothing is as plain as it seems, and that is a truth that has pervaded the Irish Olympic team here in Rio, too.
Up until two rowing crews brightened the nation, Ireland’s 2016 Games were in danger of being remembered as the worst yet. For the first time in history, an Irish athlete was sent home from an Olympics.
The disgrace of Michael O’Reilly is a personal weight he and his family must bear for years to come. He claims to have made a mistake but ignorance was long ago rejected as a defence in the fight against cheats.
A month ago, previews of the Olympics assumed Irish success would come in the boxing ring. The high-performance system preparing athletes in that sport was the envy of the world. It appeared a good-news story begging to be written one more time.
Instead, chaos and crisis have threatened to derail the entire Irish Olympics and impugn the good name of boxing here. The Irish dope-test failure was a story picked up around the world.
The manner in which the issue was handled was hapless. The story broke two days before the Games began, at a draw to decide when boxers fought and who their opponents would be.
THE three Irish coaches in attendance knew nothing, and ended up fleeing out the back door of the draw venue to avoid the waiting Irish media. For days there was confusion about whether O’Reilly would appeal the finding, or choose to have the second part of the tested sample analysed.
His supporters said there was no issue here: it was all an honest mistake. The Olympic Council of Ireland said nothing, citing legal process. The Irish Athletic Boxing Association, long mired in controversy and criticised for its conduct, said little more.
Nobody knew anything, nobody seemed to want to know anything.
Despite coaches insisting the O’Reilly affair would not affect the other seven boxers here, the past week was gruelling inside the ropes as well as outside them. Shock defeats for two medal favourites, Paddy Barnes and Joe Ward, deepened the misery.
And as Ireland suffered, their former coach, Billy Walsh, was reviving a rival country before our eyes. Walsh left Ireland in sulphurous circumstances last October following long-standing issues with the IABA.
He now heads up the system in America, once dominant but moribund for years. In less than 12 months in the job, Walsh has already revived it, the team winning their first medal in men’s boxing since Beijing in 2008.
The Irish capacity for selfharm was in danger of finding chaotic expression here: a good man driven out returning to haunt our incompetence, a boxer’s reckless actions threatening to destroy the team from within, and then a ticket touting scandal erupted that allegedly involved tickets
that had been allocated to the Olympic Council of Ireland.
Pat Hickey is the long-standing supremo of the OCI, but he was forced into a hurried TV interview denying wrongdoing and admitting he was embarrassed. It was the second time in a week Hickey admitted to embarrassment to the nation.
For a powerful sporting administrator not noted for doubting himself, Hickey’s humiliation must have been mortifying.
And that, perhaps, has been the great pity of the open- ing eight days of action in the Games of the 31st Olympiad: it has focused on cheats, scandals and administrators. Cheating is, say the cynics, the modus operandi of the Olympic Games, but the evidence does not support that kind of defeatism.
There is room in sport, still, for honesty and excellence to co-exist. The proof was in the terrific bravery of our rowing crews, the men’s and women’s lightweight double sculls.
In the former boat were the O’Donovan brothers from Skibbereen, who emerged from the water as if they had just been unplugged from the mains.
Their knowing country boys’ act made the nation roar with laughter, but their guts and skills were more impressive.
The women were led by the remarkable Sinéad Jennings, 40 next month and a married mother of three, who qualified as a pharmacist, then a doctor.
In their effort and the endeavour of other Irish athletes, is the spirit of Olympic competition in its purest sense. That has been lost in the controversies. It is Sinéad Jennings and others like her that inspire people, not self-regarding administrators or dopers, touts or chancers.
Cariocas, as residents of Rio are known, have been largely unmoved by heroism in whatever form it takes, or whichever country’s colours adorn it. There is wealth in this city of six million people, but more obvious is the poverty.
The final bill is officially estimated at $6bn. Analysts predict it will be double that. And for what in return? Venues have been half-empty or worse, the cost of tickets beyond citizens in a country where the minimum wage is about €67 a week.
CRIME stories have haunted the Games. Photographers have had thousands of euro worth of equipment stolen from the media facilities. Two bullets were fired at a bus returning from one stadium.
Chinese visitors travelling from the airport in a taxi were caught up in a gang shoot-out.
Many colleagues have stories of low-level crime, too, and nobody has been leaving valuables in their hotel room when they leave for a day’s work. That is perhaps a terrible slight on decent people but there have been too many tales of theft for trust to be assumed.
The Rio Olympics is already being compared to disasters like the 1996 Atlanta Olympics (ruined by horrendous transport problems) and Athens in 2004 (construction delays brought chaos of a different order).
And the cost of flying to Rio from Europe means there has been no influx of valuable tourists and their money, either. This is most noticeable at the boxing venues.
In Beijing eight years ago, there was tremendous Irish support, perhaps attributable to death-rattle of the Celtic Tiger.
Irish fans took over the boxing venue and turned it into a twoweek knees-up.
The proximity of London made visits over and back affordable four years ago, and Tricolours adorned the gym as Katie Taylor led the Irish campaign.
But in Rio, there are only lonely cries of support for fighters, from family and close friends who have swallowed a cost that exceeds €10,000.
With gold medal contenders still to lace up their gloves, boxing can still bring Irish joy here. Michael Conlan has his first fight today, and Taylor will guarantee herself at least a bronze medal should she win her opening bout tomorrow.
The sheer guts of the rowers helped to lighten the gloom, too. But Ireland’s misery has been acute, and the 2016 Olympics will forever be tainted by association with the disgrace of Michael O’Reilly.