Most successful Olympics since 1956

MrCreosote

Well, maybe not yet, but it soon will be (forget for a minute about the Atlanta 96 debate). Might even be better if some of those bronzes change colour

And yet the haters are still complaining on and on about how rubbish we are, either because our T&F athletes are underperforming (I don't think they are btw), or most of our medals will come from one sport or whatever.

If we win 4 golds we'll be ahead of everybody's why-aren't-we-more-like-them country, New Zealand. They have 3, all from one sport too.

Just would be nice to see if people got behind the team more, and left the recriminations until afterwards.

BobMac104

... and deirdre ryan and the Heff to add two more! come on the lads!

Pisco Sour

Deirdre Ryan never had a hope of a medal! People really need to stop cluelessly getting people's expectations up.

DEFTLEFTHAND

I suppose people view the T&F as the focal point of the games, and in fairness you can't say that its exactly going well for the Irish.

MrCreosote

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

I suppose people view the T&F as the focal point of the games, and in fairness you can't say that its exactly going well for the Irish.

It's going pretty much as would be expected. No better or worse than that.

BobMac104

Pisco Sour wrote: »

Deirdre Ryan never had a hope of a medal! People really need to stop cluelessly getting people's expectations up.

give us a break will ya. We're all hoping against hope here. she did well in the worlds she had an outside shot. She had probably more of chance than alot of the others. if you sat down and went on probabilities alone for everything you'd never turn on the fecking telly.

LiamMc

OP,

I don't understand why you are discounting the Atlanta '96 achievements. Surely for consistency you wouldn't count the medal table until about two years after this Olympics. 'The Hindsight Games'.

I am hoping you are discounting the Cian O'Connor/'previous form'/Irish Equestian Humiliates Ireland Again debate.

At the minute one of the unheralded victories for Irish Sport came on Monday at a Court of Arbitration (TAS/CAS) when a French Modern Penthalon athlete Jean-Maxence Berrou and the French Modern Penthalon Federation (FMPM) appeal against the global federation International Penthalon Union (UIPM). O'Keefe and the OCI were present at the hearing.
The may have been little threat to Lanigan-O'Keefe but previously the UIPM erred when a Polish athlete was withdrawn they sent an email to Berrou stating he had qualified but then withdrew that and awarded the Irish athlete a place. Berrou lodged an appeal against the UIPM only.
TAS/CAS denied his appeal.
http://www.tas-cas.org/d2wfiles/document/6218/5048/0/201220Media20Release208.pdf

MrCreosote

LiamMc wrote: »

OP,

I don't understand why you are discounting the Atlanta '96 achievements. Surely for consistency you wouldn't count the medal table until about two years after this Olympics. 'The Hindsight Games'.

You know well I'm discounting them for the same reason Michelle Smith wasn't asked to carry the Olympic torch- because our most successful Olympian's results became an embarrassment in light of what happened afterwards.

I'd be prepared to change my opinion on these olympics if any of our current medallists test positive.

Not really the place for this debate though. Just trying to make the point that despite all the agonising from the team's haters, we'll have a very successful end result.

Cosmo Kramer

It's been a very successful Olympics for us, the last piece if the jigsaw is a gold medal, hopefully we can get that today.

Some people, no matter how well we do, don't like being proven wrong, so will complain and distort the statistics to suit themselves regardless. But, once the boxing medals are added to the list, our overall medal total relative to population in comparison to other countries will make for impressive reading. Also, the fact that the five medals have been won by five different competitors adds to the achievement in my opinion (relative to M Smith 1996 for instance).

Multiple medals, multiple competitors, multiple sports...anyone who still complains about our performance at this stage is best ignored. Constructive criticism (e.g. We should try to get more people into Sailing/Rowing/Cycling) is fair enough, general criticism (e.g. sure we're only any good at fighting and riding) is pathetic.

bren2001

MrCreosote wrote: »

You know well I'm discounting them for the same reason Michelle Smith wasn't asked to carry the Olympic torch- because our most successful Olympian's results became an embarrassment in light of what happened afterwards.

I'd be prepared to change my opinion on these olympics if any of our current medallists test positive.

Not really the place for this debate though. Just trying to make the point that despite all the agonising from the team's haters, we'll have a very successful end result.

She didn't test positive for the Olympics, she is the greatest Irish Olympian of all time, what happened after happened after. Innocent until proven guilty and all. Can't have it both ways. I agree this isn't the place for the argument.

This has been an absolutely fantastic olympics. This is the first time I have really watched an Olympics, I was a little bit too young for Bejing but remember the Kenny Egan final quite well. I think I've enjoyed this sporting event as much as any other partly due to the fact that the races arn't on at 2:30 in the morning. Its been a fantastic take by the boxers and some fantastic efforts from the likes of Analise Murphy.

The_Kew_Tour

People who claim Smith was cheat in Atlanta, would be first to forget that Sonia then should be Double World Champion from 1993 . Lets face it every Dog and Cat knew those Chinese were on something other then strong rice.

Like somebody above mentioned we have won 5 medals from 5 different competitors.

Most of the pessimistic people would have said 2 max before it started.

We could have had another Medal in Sailing just wasn't meant to be.

We may still win another medal from Walkers although I doubt it.

We have had some excellent finishes already too like Heffernan 9th place in 20k and Craig 10th in Salmon, Equestrian came 5th in team event and Aoife Smith finished 7th.

I have mentioned this twice already, but remember where we were in Athens 8 years ago and look at all the results and compare them to now. Some massive improvement!

ecoli

John Joe Nevin's medal has seen us tie the result from 56 of 1 gold, 1 silver and three Bronze and still got Nevin, Conlon and Heffernan with the ability to improve on that in the next 24 hours

K_1

ecoli wrote: »

John Joe Nevin's medal has seen us tie the result from 56 of 1 gold, 1 silver and three Bronze and still got Nevin, Conlon and Heffernan with the ability to improve on that in the next 24 hours

And Loughnane! Anything can happen with disqualifications!!!

mikeunt

There are two ways of looking at 5 medals from 5 competitorsas opposed to one athlete winning 3 or 4
i like it when one athlete wins 3 or 4 like michelle smith because it means that athlete is totally dominant
michelle smith was the most dominant female swimmer in 96
a superb acheivement which may never be equalled by an irish athlete

MrCreosote

mikeunt wrote: »

michelle smith was the most dominant female swimmer in 96
a superb acheivement which may never be equalled by an irish athlete

Mainly because of the development of WADA, and better in and out of competition testing.

The best thing about Katie Taylor's victory is that it gives us our first gold medal that we can believe in since 92.

rainbowdash

It's ridiculous trying to compare 2012 to 1956. I saw Karl Lewis making a similar point, it's impossible to compare his era to usain bolt.

In 1956 I don't believe there was any serious African participitation in middle distance running, so Delaney won from a much smaller pool of athletes.

On the other hand I believe the number of athletes competing was just around 3500, there was only 67 countries instead of over 200 today, loads of countries boycotted, they held the equestrian events in Sweden And there was probably only around 150 gold medals on offer, half of what's there today.

Cardinal Richelieu

Pisco Sour wrote: »

Deirdre Ryan never had a hope of a medal! People really need to stop cluelessly getting people's expectations up.

The media is to blame for a large part of this.