They’re being billed as another home Games, only 275 days away and easily accessible by land, sea, and air. Only there will be significantly increased costs involved in the Paris Olympics.
This includes for the Olympic Federation of Ireland (OFI), who expect their expenditure in the Paris cycle to total around €4.7 million, up from the €3.3 million costs involved in the Tokyo Games, delayed a year due to Covid-19.
Team Ireland qualified 116 athletes across 19 sports for Tokyo, including a men’s rugby sevens and women’s hockey team. Both the men’s and women’s rugby sevens are already qualified for Paris and there’s hope yet for both hockey teams, with a predicted overall Paris team of at least 120 athletes, or 260 including all support personnel.
Not helped by the fact the price of everything is going up, OFI chief executive Peter Sherrard said extra efforts were also being made to maximise the advantages offered by the proximity of Paris.
“From our point of view, our expenditure in 2024 will be €4.7 million, which will be a lot bigger than previous cycles,” he said. “For Tokyo, our total expenditure would have been around €3.3 million.
“But there are a lot more things we’re trying to do this time round, to make sure we use the opportunity with the home Games, in the promise to get it right.”
London 2012 was also billed as a home Games, and proved as much, with Irish supporters travelling in vast numbers. Speaking at a media briefing at the OFI headquarters at the Sport Ireland campus, OFI president Sarah Keane also spoke of the extra challenges around ticketing.
“I think I’m personally equally terrified and totally excited about it at the same time,” Keane said of Paris. “We are going from a Games [Tokyo] where there was nobody there, to a Games whereby we have more sponsors and partners than we ever have before.
“There is a lot of support from Government and Sport Ireland, who will want to be out there and from families, and all that is going to be really challenging.
“We have a whole list of ticketing and how we are prioritising it in order to get as many there as possible. The public tickets are sold out now. So I think the whole thing will be challenging in that sense.
“But the fact we have the hospitality house, the fact we have the cultural centre, the fact we have a place where families can meet and socialise, I feel that is a key point.”
In Tokyo, given the restrictions around Covid-19, athletes were required the leave the team village within two days of competition. That will still apply in Paris to help ensure a more peaceful environment, but they can still stay instead at the OFI hospitality.
Team Ireland chef de mission Gavin Noble also noted that some sports such as rowing, golf and equestrian would be housed separate to the village and closer to their venues, while the OFI were also looking into the possibility of adding air conditioning units to their rooms at the village, something which wasn’t previously allowed, at a cost of around €30,000.
At the start of this year, Sport Ireland announced an increase of €4 million in high-performance investment for 2023, for a total of €24 million. Sport Ireland is tracking to invest over €67 million in high performance sport between 2022 and 2024.
The budget earlier this month also announced increased funding for elite high-performance athletes ahead of the Games in Paris in 2024, although an exact figure has not been put on that.
Paris is essentially a three-year Olympic cycle, while Tokyo stretched out to five, and there is also an increase in the medal hopes too, Noble pointing to five to seven medal prospects, and 12 to 14 medal opportunities.
Team Ireland won four medals in Tokyo, Kellie Harrington (gold) and Aidan Walsh (bronze) in boxing, and Fintan McCarthy and Paul O’Donovan (gold) and the women’s four in rowing (bronze).
It was also announced that the town of Fontainebleau, 60km southeast from Paris, would host the pre-Games training camp for the Irish athletics team.
On the matter of the Ukraine/Russia conflict and how that might impact on Russian participation at the Games, Keane said the International Olympic Committee (IOC) haven’t yet made their decision known.
The question of boxing being on the Olympic programme beyond Paris is also still a matter for the IOC.
“For the moment we are focused on Paris because it is so close. We are staying as upbeat as possible around it, taking it one step at a time ... but it is a waiting game as much as anything else,” Keane said.
