Should we be celebrating bronze (and silver) medals??

Al Capwned

This probably gonna upset one or two. It's not meant to - It's just something that Peter Taylor's comments after Katie's quarter-final on Monday.

I cannot understand why people are celebrating the fact that Ireland have won bronze or silver medals - Surely we should celebrate winning, not coming second or third.

We have very low expectations as to the amount of medals we are going to win, and probably rightly so, considering the size of the country and the pitiful budget the OCI and the athletes themselves get.

But that still doesn't explain why we should celebrate being second best - Peter Taylor had it spot on the other day when he said "We don't do bronze medals" - Aim to win the bloody thing!!

I'd compliment and congratulate every single athlete that goes to an Olympic Games and does their best for themselves and their country, especially the Irish obviously, but I'll celebrate when we win Gold Medals, be that a boxer, a sailor, a track athlete, whatever.

But the sooner the better we stop accepting 'glorious failure' the better.

Thoughts? I put this on facebook earlier, and it's pretty much split my friends opinions.

Dohnny Jepp

Being the second or third best in your field is worthy of celebration

Pudsy33

It's incredibly difficult to win any medal, consider our population and budget. Obviously I'd prefer gold, but a silver or bronze is a respectful achievement and should not be sniffed at.

TheMilkyPirate

An Olympic medal is an extremely difficult thing to achieve, We should be celebrating every single one of them be it gold silver or bronze

trashcan

We had something of a similar discussion in work today. It's all relative, that's the thing. When we're winning ****loads of medals like the USA (or the UK at these games) then we can afford to be blase about coming 2nd or 3rd. By all means win the thing if you can (after 4 world titles for example a silver would undoubtedly be a huge disappointment for Katie Taylor) but for the moment a bronze or silver medal is a good achievement for an Irish sportsman/woman. We might as well acknowledge that. It's hardly "celebrating failure". A homecoming party for reaching the last 16 in the world cup is much closer to that in my view. (For anyone old enough to remember 1994)

Al Capwned

Pudsy33 wrote: »

It's incredibly difficult to win any medal, consider our population and budget. Obviously I'd prefer gold, but a silver or bronze is a respectful achievement and should not be sniffed at.

Of course it's a fine achievement I agree.... But is it worthy of the celebration that is seen in some places? Would Katie Taylor celebrate a silver medal tomorrow evening? I think not.

Would Alex Ferguson have celebrated finishing last season in second place?

I am not trying to belittle any medal won, any achievement at all - I respect and admire all of these competitors. But we have had the likes of Stephen Roche, Jim Stynes, Catherina McKiernan, Liam Brady, Roy Keane, Sonia O'Sullivan who have all won on the highest stage of their respective sports. So we have proven that we can do it on the world stage...

I loved Peter Taylor's comment "We don't do bronze medals" the other day - It showed a great winning mentality - the mentality of a true champion imo.

Pherekydes

Jesus, other sports just celebrate qualifying! :eek:

Solair

Eh, yes we should celebrate bronze medals.

It means being in the top 3 in your sport globally !!!

Pudsy33

alproctor wrote: »

Pudsy33 wrote: »

It's incredibly difficult to win any medal, consider our population and budget. Obviously I'd prefer gold, but a silver or bronze is a respectful achievement and should not be sniffed at.

Of course it's a fine achievement I agree.... But is it worthy of the celebration that is seen in some places? Would Katie Taylor celebrate a silver medal tomorrow evening? I think not.

Would Alex Ferguson have celebrated finishing last season in second place?

I am not trying to belittle any medal won, any achievement at all - I respect and admire all of these competitors. But we have had the likes of Stephen Roche, Jim Stynes, Catherina McKiernan, Liam Brady, Roy Keane, Sonia O'Sullivan who have all won on the highest stage of their respective sports. So we have proven that we can do it on the world stage...

I loved Peter Taylor's comment "We don't do bronze medals" the other day - It showed a great winning mentality - the mentality of a true champion imo.

Well it depends what you mean by celebrate. I won't go mad celebrating, but I certainly feel a sense of pride in seeing my country getting a medal.

Avatarr

If you trained 3 times a day, 6 days a week, while battling injury on a miserable grant, you may have a different opinion.

locum-motion

Is your real name Michael Carruth, Michelle Smith or Ronnie Delaney?
No?

Then you don't really have the right to say we shouldn't celebrate bronze/silver, do you?

alproctor wrote: »

This probably gonna upset one or two. It's not meant to - It's just something that Peter Taylor's comments after Katie's quarter-final on Monday.

I cannot understand why people are celebrating the fact that Ireland have won bronze or silver medals - Surely we should celebrate winning, not coming second or third.

We have very low expectations as to the amount of medals we are going to win, and probably rightly so, considering the size of the country and the pitiful budget the OCI and the athletes themselves get.

But that still doesn't explain why we should celebrate being second best - Peter Taylor had it spot on the other day when he said "We don't do bronze medals" - Aim to win the bloody thing!!

I'd compliment and congratulate every single athlete that goes to an Olympic Games and does their best for themselves and their country, especially the Irish obviously, but I'll celebrate when we win Gold Medals, be that a boxer, a sailor, a track athlete, whatever.

But the sooner the better we stop accepting 'glorious failure' the better.

Thoughts? I put this on facebook earlier, and it's pretty much split my friends opinions.

rainbowdash

Ask Eamonn Couglan, Sonia O'Sullivan or Annalise Murphy what its like to finish fourth.

The answer is always the same:

"Fourth in the Olympics is the worst feeling in the world"

I think they (and I am sure there are other Irish athletes who finished 4th as well) are best place to decide if bronze is worth celebrating, and I think they would all say it is.

fryup

as i said before we are now a modern developed western country and we should be much more ambitous in the Olympics...and not to be relying on the boxers each time

we are an island nation, so by right we should be amongst the mix when it comes to all sailing events

we have a strong tradition in all things equine, so we should also be more consistent in showjumping, eventing and dressage

Felexicon

fryup wrote: »

as i said before we are now a modern developed western country and we should be much more ambitous in the Olympics...and not to be relying on the boxers each time

we are an island nation, so by right we should be amongst the mix when it comes to all sailing events

we have a strong tradition in all things equine, so we should also be more consistent in showjumping, eventing and dressage

Of course we're going to have to rely on boxers at each Olympics. It's probably the only sporting association in Ireland with a set up geared towards winning. They don't go for the "everyone should get an equal opportunity" approach. They sniff out the top talents at each wieght division and get them into the elite squad where they have access to the best coaches, dieticians, physios etc.
Until this approach is taken by every sport(I believe the show jumpers are introducing it) we will continue to be left behind.
If the goal is for Ireland to win as many Olympic gold medals as possible we need to shift our thinking on smaller sports and start introducing them to secondary schools. Get rowing, canoeing, archery, badminton etc as weekly activities in P.E and ensure there is information about local clubs available to the students who show signs of promise.

As for the question posted by the OP.
Bronze medals should be celebrated as it's a huge achievement. However, we should not be sending athletes who are "hoping for a medal". Everyone we send should be going there with the aim of taking home gold, no matter how realistic that is.

sheao

For a country of our size I think any medal is achievement .

Rodgeb

Felexicon wrote: »

Of course we're going to have to rely on boxers at each Olympics. It's probably the only sporting association in Ireland with a set up geared towards winning. They don't go for the "everyone should get an equal opportunity" approach. They sniff out the top talents at each wieght division and get them into the elite squad where they have access to the best coaches, dieticians, physios etc.
Until this approach is taken by every sport(I believe the show jumpers are introducing it) we will continue to be left behind.
If the goal is for Ireland to win as many Olympic gold medals as possible we need to shift our thinking on smaller sports and start introducing them to secondary schools. Get rowing, canoeing, archery, badminton etc as weekly activities in P.E and ensure there is information about local clubs available to the students who show signs of promise.

As for the question posted by the OP.
Bronze medals should be celebrated as it's a huge achievement. However, we should not be sending athletes who are "hoping for a medal". Everyone we send should be going there with the aim of taking home gold, no matter how realistic that is.

Spot on.

Winning a silver or bronze medal is a big achievement.
However it should only be considered an achievement after the event, the aim should always be for gold.

I remember in Beijing some of the RTE boxing analysts were critical of Darren Sutherland after his semi final loss saying that he fought like he was just happy to get a bronze but could have done better if he really believed he could...

Schools in Ireland have a huge part to play if we are to ever increase the range of sports we are competitive in. In my secondary school we had one double class (1 hour 20 mins) of PE a week for first and second year only. This was always a couple of indoor football matches.
We were never introduced to anything different. Unless you were on the first team of the school hurling team you could forget about any organized sports.

Some Aussies I know explained to me that years ago there was a shift in policy for PE in Australia. Where before they used to concentrate on elite athletes they decided the best approach as a society was to introduce people to as many sports as possible.
The ultimate goal was that more students, guys and girls, would find a sport or activity that they enjoyed and would participate in after leaving school. The upshot was they found that the range and amount of medals they started winning at events also went through the roof.
Not sure of the hard facts of this is however I think it is something that should be looked at.

Also, in the US everyone who wants to go to college is heavily encouraged to participate in organised sports which forms part of their college application and also to avail of huge scholarships. The points race rules out anything like that here.

Skid

alproctor wrote: »

I cannot understand why people are celebrating the fact that Ireland have won bronze or silver medals - Surely we should celebrate winning, not coming second or third.


... the sooner the better we stop accepting 'glorious failure' the better.

Who are you to tell people what they should or should not celebrate? It is a free country and I don't need anyone to tell me what I should deem 'acceptable'.

Felexicon

Skid wrote: »

Who are you to tell people what they should or should not celebrate? It is a free country and I don't need anyone to tell me what I should deem 'acceptable'.

Then get off boards.

Skid

Felexicon wrote: »

Then get off boards.

:rolleyes:

spriteof1798

Of course we should be proud of someone coming in the top 3 or even 4 in the the world. Some sports are easier to win medals in. For example in boxing there is only one participate from each country, one Cuban, one Russian etc. They also give out 2 bronze medals. Also, you could be lucky and end up on the right side of the draw in the boxing. The 2nd and 3rd best might be eliminated before you get to the final. In show jumping you have to have a daddy who can afford to buy you a horse.

Imagine if they only allowed one Jamaican, one american in the 100m sprint. It would make life a lot easier. Rob Heffernan got 4th on the Olympics 50k walk against the 3 best from every country against him. That is something to be very proud of and could possible be (maybe not) a bigger achivement than a Silver in the boxing.

Al Capwned

Skid wrote: »

Who are you to tell people what they should or should not celebrate? It is a free country and I don't need anyone to tell me what I should deem 'acceptable'.

I wasn't telling anyone what they should or shouldn't do - I was giiving my opinion and asking others for theirs. <snip>

Mod note:
No uncivil remarks please!!

rainbowdash

spriteof1798 wrote: »

Imagine if they only allowed one Jamaican, one american in the 100m sprint. It would make life a lot easier. Rob Heffernan got 4th on the Olympics 50k walk against the 3 best from every country against him. That is something to be very proud of and could possible be (maybe not) a bigger achivement than a Silver in the boxing.

Maybe 1 competitor per country in all non relay Track and field events, such as the 1500m, javelin and walk etc.

The dice is loaded in favour of bigger countries, with 3 equally strong russians and chinese in the walk the chances of 1 coming good are better than countries having 1 strong athlete and a few back markers, which was Ireland's case.

It's the same in swimming, athletics relays and 4-8 man rowing events, the bigger countries will always have a quota of strong athletes and hence have a selection of medal opportunities exclusively between themselves.