A famous quote by the Jamaican bobsledder, Sanka Coffie, quote sums up the mood of the Irish nation in the afterglow of a mind-opening Olympics – “I am feeling very Olympic today. How about you?” We all enjoyed the adrenaline-boosting bursts of multiple sports and stories over the last fortnight. Easy enjoyment.
The hard part will be to turn that Olympics feeling we have today into an openminded embrace of sports for the years and decades to come that will have a generational impact on the physical and mental health of our society for centuries to come. I was Gaelic football obsessed from the age of 16. Every decision in my life was mapped around a blind ambition to win a Connacht Championship and a Senior Club Championship.
The decisions oscillated from sane to insane. The important pieces of silver tin were never brought home (..
.yet?), plenty of regrets but no stones unturned. I do also have a few non-Gaelic football regrets.
The blind obsession didn’t stop me acknowledging the joy in other sports. A confluence of events has meant that chat around sports funding has spiked in the last year, Paris 2024 has brought this chatter to crescendo. The discourse around sports funding frustrates me, deeply.
On a majority of occasions, the discussion rapidly becomes reductive. Gross self-preservation and negative campaigning rampage, virally, among otherwise balanced individuals. People immediately retreat to long entrenched and largely outdated stereotypical views of those i.