The AH Tokyo 2020 Olympics/Paralympics Thread in 2021

That's much better from him.

That was a great opening bout for Kellie Harrington - very tactical and technical and she hardly expended an ounce of energy.

Should steady her nerves (if she had any) and give her great confidence.

I don't think any of them hurt her though, they were just glancing off her. She's not even out of breath in her post fight interview.

BMX'ing looks like a handy number as a relatively low cost sport to be involved in, we should be competing in it, could we arrest any lad flying around his locality on a scrambler and educate him in to the ways of BMX?

Well done Aidan Walsh. Secures at least a Bronze and thats medal number 3 secured. With Harrington and Walker one fight away from medal its looking a good week for Ireland.

Walsh fights the GB lad next which will be tough, he will be underdog, but he can fight with bit of freedom now.

There is no lightweight fours event at the Olympics unfortunately.

Just on the rowing the Brits ended up with two medals and no golds from the Olympic event. They spent £27m to provide that return. We brought back the same number of medals including a gold medal with a fraction of the investment. Great achievement by the team.

I don't know the exact breakdown but it's the sport that gets the most funding, more than swimming, cycling and athletics even. Winning zero gold medals is an absolute disaster for them.

Katherine Grainger seems to have a high profile role in terms of the distribution of funding, which may help explain why rowing gets so much. She was trying to spin it and put a brave face on it again on BBC TV this morning, as she has done all week. But James Cracknell, to his credit, was at least being more honest about it - which is rare when it comes to BBC coverage of the British Olympic team.

well done to Aidan Walsh and fingers crossed he goes all the way.

Never watched soccer then.

Fours in rowing in Olympics is open class so he would bit too small.

Just imagine 4 Paul O'Connells in a boat instead.

No wonder Katherine Grainger was wondering what was in the water in Skibbereen.

Imagine going into head of Olympic funding and being how come the irish are doing so well in comparison despite the multiple of millions. 😁

And I think she was also pi***d off that the only rowers on the Graham Norton show were the Irish.

do we have the participation for it? never see any kids round my way on them 😶

Well we definitely have stakeboard tracks great one in Bushy Park + other places + I'm sure you could adapt if for BMX.

Great thing is they would be used anyway so bonus if can target them for taking part in Olympics.

Skate parks are way too small and some of the BMX ramps are way too big to be just leaving them out unsupervised.

Like everything else at the Olympics we don't have the clubs or facilities.

Mountain biking on the other hand is something I'm surprised we don't see more of in Ireland. We do have the junior world champion in downhill but it's not in the Olympics

I think that’s part of it and also it’s probably not considered very sporting or safe to have a guy who may have taken a bit of a beating in a semi to fight again a short time later for a bronze.

Ah right I don't know the ins and out Breezy but still think no harm having more stakeparks, anything to keep teenagers occupied.

Yeah we would need coaches to get them actually trained + don't think we have to many BMX coaching experts in Ireland, but maybe in years to come!