The AH Tokyo 2020 Olympics/Paralympics Thread in 2021

The question is what do we want to achieve with our spending on sport, do we want elites winning medals or do we want mass participation.

If the masses want GAA, rugby and soccer facilities and that is what gets more people off the couch well then that's a far better use of public money than for a feel good factor every four years.

The concept is about being a soldier behind enemy lines trying to escape - which is quite interesting and explains the jumping on a random horse aspect. Maybe they should replace the horses with WWII era motorcycles and have barbed wire fences instead of poles.

Non natives???? Elaborate please Enoch Powell

6 of NZs 7 golds came in rowing and canoeing (the 7th in Rugby!). They've put huge money in to both over the last decade. What it does show is that the best strategy for Olympic success for small nations is to heavily target 2 or 3 sports max. where there may be potentially "soft" golds available. Pointless building velodromes and large pools imho.

One way of getting more medals is to make GAA professional but force the players to take up an olympic sport on the side

Philippines got its first gold medal in over a century at this Olympics- population over 100m. This shows it comes down to money

It's correct application of both. Population alone is nothing if people don't have access to training and facilities. What population gives you is good numbers in every sport even the very niche ones but it definitely still needs plenty of money to turn it into GB or Japan level medals

The one person that actually won't watch.

Individual sports have always been a lack of emphasis on individual sports in Ireland. Pretty much the non field sports.

When I was growing up I don't think I knew anybody that competed in an sport other than the Big 3 or Hockey. A couple of lads played golf but that's about it.

There also needs to be questions about lottery funding. The UK has a sporting system that is the envy of nearly all countries which is funded by the lottery. I was watching something the other day (Track Cycling,I think) and one of the athletes was doing an interview after and she even took time to thank the lottery.

The lottery was originally meant to for funding sports. Remember all of the sports apparatus on the old tickets? Now it goes to funding things the HSE, dodgy NGO's and some box ticking excercises.

Essentially we need an elite sporting programme. Where money distributed is done on sporting grounds and not politically. All of those AstroTurf pitches are not being built because politicians really care about kids playing sports.

Ultimatums need to put to sports to start getting your houses in order. Start bringing value to the country either economically or emotionally, or your funding is getting cut. And that includes the Big 3 field games.

The sports council needs to be over spending, first emphasis should be the overall health and fitness of the nation and then international competition. At the moment spending is political with blatant favouritism given to the constituency of the Minister for sport.

A lot of GAA pitches are funded by the local team/community specifically for GAA. It's wouldn't be reasonable to tell them how to spend this money if it's not fully state funded. I find it hard to believe there would be a pitch in most small towns/villages if not for the GAA. They tend to be fairly generous with the usage of it and I've seen plenty of local athletics teams using them. I suspect if they were approached and asked for usage with a stipend for upkeep you might get somewhere.

The state needs to invest more in sports and school facilities need to be dramatically improved too. There are schools with 600+ students with no sports hall/astro/pitches in urban areas. Who knows how many kids never get the opportunity even today like the marathon runner.

Should soccer have been allowed to build facilities that are not multi sport?

If there is ever a cost benefit analysis done, elite sport wouldn't get funding at all. €120k to fund an Olympian for a full cycle vs building a 5km walking track for a village, which do you think represents better value?

Looks like they've already been dropped from the leading group.