Road to Rio 2016 - Irish Olympic News

To start off with I'm going to do a round-up of some Irish results from Olympic sports post-London 2012.


Irish modern pentathlete Arthur Lanigan-O'Keeffe won Ireland's first ever major international medal when he claimed bronze at the World Junior Championships in Drzonkow, Poland in early September. Arthur is only 20 and already has Olympic experience having come home in 25th place in London 2012. He will be a huge prospect for Rio 2016 if he can carry his current rate of progress forward over the next few years. He actually led the field going into the combined shoot and run event in Poland but he couldn't hold onto his advantage. However, he did hang on for a magnificent bronze medal....he is World Junior Bronze medallist, a great achievement for the Kilkenny man.


Arthur after his bronze medal presentation:






Ireland's junior showjumpers claimed gold at the European Junior Championships in Austria in mid-August. The team was comprised of Bertram Allen, Shannon McKenzie, Max O'Reilly-Hyland and Sven Hadley.
In further good news for Irish equestrian, our Young rider team won silver at the European Eventing Championships in Malmo, Sweden in August. As is the norm with Irish eventing, the team got off to a slow start, lying in a solid 5th position after dressage. The team then shot up to 3rd place after the cross-country element before pipping the French to the silver medal after the showjumping phase. The team was made up of Katie Nolan, Jessica O'Driscoll, David Hannigan and Shane Power.
Shane Power claimed 7th place in the individual rankings with Katie Nolan in 8th and individual rider Melanie Young in 13th place.
This is encouraging news for the sport in Ireland and hopefully Irish equestrian will continue to flourish over the next few years.

More news to follow soon....

Ireland's young boxers performed magnificently at the European Schoolboys Championships in Anapa, Russia in early October.
The team claimed 3 golds with Oliver McCarthy, James McGivern and Michael Nevin all claiming overall titles, 1 silver from John Sweeney and 6 bronze medals with Francie Stokes, Kieran Molloy, Brett McGinley, Darragh Murray, Nevan Fannon and James Clarke all claiming podium finishes. Only Russia's young boxers bettered Ireland's incredible haul of 10 medals.
Hopefully we'll see some of these young boxers coming into the senior fold over the next few years. Irish boxing will remain in good hands in the future it seems

KevIRL wrote: »

Bronze for Ireland in World Junior Triathlon today...

There sure was.... an excellent performance by young Mayo man Con Doherty to claim Ireland's first ever world championship medal in the sport of triathlon (just weeks after Arthur Lanigan-O'Keeffe claimed Ireland's first medal in modern pentathlon).
Con put in a huge effort in the bike leg and forged a lead over the main bunch and would ultimately secure him the bronze medal at the ITU World Junior Championships in Auckland, New Zealand. He was agonisingly close to silver but was beaten in a sprint finish by Frenchman, Simon Viain.
The result came as a bit of a surprise but is a huge boost not just to Con but to the entire sport in Ireland, which has been flourishing here in recent years.
Another exciting young prospect emerging in Irish Olympic sport.


Con Doherty battling hard to the finish line, picking up the World Junior bronze medal

Different sports will have different targets in the coming years.... for some, simply to qualify an athlete would be a huge achievement and a huge step forward from a very small base.

Others will look to increase the numbers of qualifers, and beyond that some sports will be looking to develop into medal winning potential.

Sailing in London 2012 went from being a sport where we have many qualifers on a consistent basis to being a sport where we genuinely were contending to medal. Rio 2016 will hopefully see this potential be strengthened and deliver with medal success.

On the athletics front, for London 2012, Ireland took a big step forward in terms of the unprecedented number of athletes we had achieving the A qualifying standard. The next progression would be to maintain those numbers but having more athletes with potential to win medals. Rob Heffernan showed his potential in London with an agonising 4th place finish in the 50km but he was the only prospect for success in 2012 in athletics. For Rio 2016 there is scope for optimism with a few promising young athletes on the horizon. A medal may not be forthcoming in Rio in this sport for Ireland but certainly you could see a situation where we could have athletes challenging for top finishes in a few disciplines. But 4 years is a long time in sport and you never know what can happen.

Ireland has made promising strides in both modern pentathlon and triathlon. Both of those sports have limited scope for medals as there are only 2 sets of medals up for grabs in each, but these sports have gone from having little or no Irish representation on the elite international stage, to having athletes capable of top finishes on a consistent basis in the most prestigious events...all in the space of just a few years.
There's every chance we could have a serious medal contender in Rio in one of these sports (Modern Pentathlon looking particularly promising).

There are also promising developments in Irish cycling with a focus on identifying and developing talent for the 2020 Olympics. This process has been in place for over a year now and should start paying off over the next few seasons. Even without this programme, the current crop of emerging juniors are achieving success on the road with Ryan Mullen recently winning silver in the European Junior Time Trial (Road) and Sean Downey performing well in the junior road race also.
Even at grassroots level, the increase in participation levels in cycling in Ireland has been phenomenal over the last couple of years, to my mind anyway. There is noticeably a big increase in the number of people out cycling on our roads and also there seems to be a big increase in the number of local races being organised....the increase in interest has been great.

Sorry, I've started rambling on now, back to the point on whether we can better our performance from London, well there's no reason why we shouldn't be aiming to to even better in Rio. The early signs 4 years out from the Games is that we have the talent to achieve huge success in 2016...some of our athletes will achieve success even when up against the odds in terms of funding, lack of facilities, lack of access to top coaching or whatever. Others have the talent to achieve but particularly in very technical sports will need a big input of investment to enable them to reach their potential and to help identify talent for the future.

Just an update on how our underage football teams have been performing lately, not entirely related to the Rio 2016 thread I know, but as the men's Olympic football tournament is an U-23 competition for the most part I thought we should cover Irish underage performances in the lead up to Rio 2016, as well as the women's football team (underage and senior level).....

Men's U-17 European Championships 2013, First Qualifying Round
Group 10: Top 2 teams qualify for Second Qualifying Round
Host nation: Macedonia
Sept.29 Republic of Ireland 1-1 Sweden
Sept.30 Romania 1-1 Macedonia
Oct.1 Republic of Ireland 4-1 Macedonia
Oct.1 Sweden 2-1 Romania
Oct.4 Romania 0-2 Republic of Ireland
Oct.4 Macedonia 0-4 Sweden

Group 10|P|W|D|L|F|A|+/-|PTS
Q Republic of Ireland|3|2|1|0|7|2|+5|7
Q Sweden|3|2|1|0|7|2|+5|7
Romania|3|0|1|2|2|5|-3|1
Macedonia|3|0|1|2|2|9|-7|1


Republic of Ireland and Sweden qualify for Second Qualifying Round

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Men's U-19 European Championships 2013, First Qualifying Round
Group 5: Top 2 teams qualify for Second Qualifying Round
Host nation: Luxembourg
Oct.11 Germany 5-0 Macedonia
Oct.11 Republic of Ireland 5-2 Luxembourg
Oct.13 Germany 5-0 Luxembourg
Oct.13 Macedonia 0-1 Republic of Ireland
Oct.16 Republic of Ireland 2-2 Germany
Oct.16 Luxembourg 0-1 Macedonia

Group 5|P|W|D|L|F|A|+/-|PTS
Q Germany|3|2|1|0|12|2|+10|7
Q Republic of Ireland|3|2|1|0|8|4|+4|7
Macedonia|3|1|0|2|1|6|-5|3
Luxembourg|3|0|0|3|2|11|-9|0


Germany and Republic of Ireland qualify for Second Qualifying Round.

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Women's U-17 European Championships 2013, First Qualifying Round
Group 9: Top team in each group and 5 best 2nd place teams qualify for Second Qualifying Round
Host nation: Belarus

Oct.1 Republic of Ireland 3-0 Belarus
Oct.1 Finland 11-0 Georgia
Oct.3 Republic of Ireland 7-0 Georgia
Oct.3 Belarus 0-3 Finland
Oct.6 Finland 1-2 Republic of Ireland
Oct.6 Georgia 1-4 Belarus

Group 9|P|W|D|L|F|A|+/-|PTS
Q Republic of Ireland|3|3|0|0|12|1|+11|9
Q Finland|3|2|0|1|15|2|+13|6
Belarus|3|1|0|2|4|7|-3|3
Georgia|3|0|0|3|1|22|-21|0


Republic of Ireland and Finland qualify for the Second Qualifying Round.

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Women's U-19 European Championships 2013, First Qualifying Round
Group 1: Top two teams in each group qualify for Second Qualifying Round
Host nation: Serbia

Oct.20 Republic of Ireland 3-0 Cyprus
Oct.20 Serbia 15-0 Latvia
Oct.22 Republic of Ireland 11-0 Latvia
Oct.22 Cyprus 0-10 Serbia
Oct.25 Serbia 2-3 Republic of Ireland
Oct.25 Latvia 0-1 Cyprus

Group 1|P|W|D|L|F|A|+/-|PTS
Q Republic of Ireland|3|3|0|0|17|2|+15|9
Q Serbia|3|2|0|1|27|3|+24|6
Cyprus|3|1|0|2|1|13|-12|3
Latvia|3|0|0|3|0|27|-27|0


Republic of Ireland and Serbia qualify for Second Qualifying Round.

Finally, the news that we've all been waiting for over the last few weeks.... Olympic silver medallist John Joe Nevin will remain amateur and has just signed up for British Lionhearts for the WSB (World Series of Boxing) tournament starting Novemeber 15th. Joe Ward also joined the newly formed team. It'll be welcome news to most Irish Olympic fans who want to see JJ Nevin go for gold in Rio.

Silvio.Dante wrote: »

That is great news for john Joe aswell as the team. I wouldn't have trusted Amir Khan as far as I'd throw him.

The World Series sounds very interesting...

This will be the third season of the WSB....it has been an interesting development by the AIBA (World Boxing Federation). The good thing is that it allows amateur boxers a chance to earn some decent money whilst remaining amateur and eligible for the Olympics. It's also like professional boxing in that there are no vests or protective headgear worn by competitors and there are 5 rounds of 3 minutes each and it is scored like professional boxing.... I'm really interested to see how Joe Ward will do. Let's not forget that he's a major medal hope for us going forward to Rio 2016.

feargale wrote: »

Nobody deserves gold more than Paddy Barnes. He'll be 29 at Rio. Is that generally past one's best ?

Yes, Paddy was so close to beating that Chinese guy who went on to claim a second successive Olympic title...only beaten on countback.

No reason why Paddy can't be at his best by Rio at 29 which can be a prime age even in amateur boxing (every athlete is different though so there's no way of knowing). But I wouldn't be worried about his age at all, it shouldn't really be too much of an issue for him...form, mental strength and the desire to stick at it will more likely decide whether he will be in shape to succeed in Rio 2016.

A great weekend for Ireland and 2012 Olympian Martyn Irvine at the Track Cycling World Cup in Glasgow.
Martyn claimed a superb silver medal in the men's scratch race yesterday evening and has followed that success by qualifying for the final of the men's 4km Individual Pursuit.....this guarantees him at least another silver medal as he rides off for gold later today.

In other Irish Olympic news, London 2012 Olympic triathlete, Aileen Reid (previously Morrison) is targeting Rio 2016 and has changed her training set-up to help her make further improvements. She is switching her training to Australia from her previous base in Lisburn, Northern Ireland and will train alongside some top-class triathletes and is also switching to a new coach, located out in Australia. On the face of it, looks like a very encouraging move by Aileen. In 4 years time Aileen will be 34 so Rio will likely be her last shot at Olympic glory.
Positive news.

Another good day for Ireland at the European Short Course Swimming Championships in Chartres, France. No medals today but some superb performances, particularly from 2012 Olympians Sycerika McMahon and Barry Murphy.
Sycerika's remarkable meet continued with 3 more Irish senior records from 3 races today....she is something special and when she goes into the pool you just expect her to come back in a new Irish record every single time.
Her assault on the Irish record books today came in the form of the women's 100m breaststroke and the 100m Individual Medley.
She set new Irish records in the 100m breaststroke heats and semis to qualify for tomorrow evening's final as 3rd fastest qualifier and another prospect for an Irish medal in that event tomorrow.
She backed that up by placing a creditable 7th in the 100m Individual Medley final in, you guessed it, another Irish record time!!

Barry Murphy made the final of the men's 50m breaststroke after setting a new Irish record in the semi-finals earlier in the day. He yet again bettered that time to set another Irish record when placing 6th in the final this evening. Murphy has made a positive start to his new training set up back home at the National High Performance Centre in Dublin having been previously based in America for the last few seasons.

Brendan Hyland set a new Irish Junior record in his 200m butterfly heats this morning also, so a fantastic day for the Irish swimming team in France. Best of luck to Sycerika tomorrow...I'm predicting more silverware for the young Irish star.

Fionnuala Britton retained her European Senior Women's Cross-Country title in Budapest this afternoon.
Ireland also won the Senior Women's team gold medal capping an amazing weekend for the Irish.
Linda Byrne had a superb race to finish 8th, helping the team to the gold medal...the other team members were Ava Hutchinson (20th), Lizzie Lee (23rd), Sarah McCormack (36th) and Sarah Louise Treacy (42nd).


Fionnuala Britton and her team-mates with their gold medals: