The Olympic Games in Paris took centre stage this weekend after Friday’s spectacular opening ceremony. Shane Lowry and Sarah Lavin carried the flag on the river Seine for Ireland’s 133 athletes and gymnast Rhys McCleneghan was among those in action yesterday. The men’s Rugby Sevens team will be wondering what might have been after sealing a sixth place finish, while rowers Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch laid down a marker in the double sculls.
Many of their team-mates including Olympic champions Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy get their Games under way today. Denis Walsh will be there watching and he spoke to several of them about how the sport has grown and the challenge of taking on the world’s best. Check out our round-up to see the full list of Irish athletes involved today and we have the full schedule for the whole Games here.
Ian O’Riordan has been to seven Olympics for The Irish Times and told the In the News podcast he believes this team can bring home a record number of medals. In his column this week, he discusses the dilemma facing Rhasidat Adeleke about whether to run the 4x400m mixed relay in Paris or focus on her individual events. Johnny Watterson teed up the next two weeks: “One thing the athletes understand does not change is how the Games can find them out, exploit weakness. Harsh lessons are learned. Just now, especially, the rugby players know how that feels.”
While thousands of athletes and fans have descended on Paris for the Games, many locals have headed in the opposite direction. As Áine Healy writes in Weekend, “for those staying, their collective apathy has left the soul of Paris empty”. Journalist Sharon Gaffney writes about the huge security presence there with many of the famous landmarks fenced off. One visitor told her “I feel like I’m in a war zone”. Despite everything, Gaffney writes, “the sense of collective dread about the logistical impact of the Games is beginning to lift”.
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The Olympics are the starting gun on a huge infrastructure project attempting to bind the city and its sprawling suburbs together. The political stakes of delivering the Games have been immense, Healy writes, and the country’s most recent elections have pushed France into new directions. “The apprehension feels palpable as the city holds its breath. Yet, there is a hesitant feeling of hope.”
Away from the Games, today is All-Ireland final day and we’re guaranteed a relatively rare winner in Armagh or Galway, neither of whom have lifted the title in the last two decades. Columnist Dean Rock reckons Armagh might edge it if they can overcome some of the distractions that can plague a week such as this. Michael Murphy also wrote about the madness of the final countdown earlier this week, while we have a match preview from Seán Moran.
Meanwhile, the fallout from Joe Biden’s decision not to seek re-election as US president continues. In his column, Fintan O’Toole writes that “after half a century of public service, Biden has performed the last great service of bowing to the inevitable and giving the Democrats a fighting chance to save the American republic. They must grasp that chance firmly and fiercely. They dithered and denied for far too long, losing too much of their own credibility by trying to insist that what everyone could see was not real. But it is not too late to get it back.”
Now attention turns to whether Kamala Harris can beat Donald Trump in the November election. Washington Correspondent Keith Duggan assesses her chances and writes of how a “fresh gust of elation has swept through the Democratic Party”. Ronan McGreevy’s story on Harris’s Irish roots drew a lot of interest this week. Genealogical research reveals Harris’s four-times-paternal-great-grandfather Hamilton Brown was born in Co Antrim in 1776. Brown emigrated to Jamaica, then a British colony, and became an enthusiastic slave owner on the sugar plantations that were the mainstay of the island’s economy. Seanín Graham spoke to locals in Ballymoney about the connection. “He was a thug, not to put too fine a point on it,” says retired researcher Linde Lunney.
At home, one of the big stories this week was the sentencing of rapist Raymond Shorten for assaults on two young women in the back on his taxi. He was jailed for 17 years. Miriam Lord was in the courtroom on Thursday and she wrote: “the 50-year-old father of seven didn’t look like a monster. They never do. But he is one.” Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has promised to implement proposals to reform the taxi licensing system “as soon as possible” in the wake of the sentencing.
Conor Gallagher had one of the most fascinating stories of the week, writing that a former senior member of the Ku Klux Klan and convicted terrorist has been meeting remotely with Irish far-right activists to provide advice and encouragement in relation to anti-immigration protests. He explains more about the links between US radicals and the Irish far right in this Q&A.
In the Irish Times Magazine this weekend, Róisín Ingle talks to Aidan Gillen about his life in acting, and what matters to him now, while in the Ticket, Una Mullally speaks to Belfast rappers Kneecap as the swirl of controversy that characterised their rise has given way to acclaim and accolades.
In this week’s On the Money newsletter, Joanne Hunt examines if retrofitting your home is worth the money. Sign up here to receive the newsletter straight to your inbox every Friday.
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