Olympic champion and gold medal winner. No matter how many times it’s said there’s a magnificent ring to it.
Before Paris 2024 and the marking of our century of Olympic participation, only nine Irish people – six men and three women – had experienced becoming an Olympic champion.
Now joining those nine – who between them had won 12 gold medals – is Daniel Wiffen, who became the first Irish male swimmer to hear Amhrán na bhFiann played out in an Olympic arena after his astonishing display in the 800 metres freestyle final on Tuesday night.
Inside the Paris La Défense Arena, the 23-year-old from Armagh went where no Irish male swimmer had gone before – this time onto the top of the Olympic medal podium.
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Refusing to settle for anything other than gold, Wiffen touched home in 7:38.19, smashing the Olympic record of 7:41.28, chasing down Gregorio Paltrinieri from Italy inside the last 100m.
As moments go these are utterly life-changing, as the previous nine Irish gold medal winners would have discovered in their own different ways.
For anyone listening to Wiffen over the last year, this was all part of his golden plan, especially after becoming the first Irish swimmer to break a world record in December, then the first to win gold at the World Championships, doubling up in both the 800m and the 1,500m in Doha in February.
Wiffen still has two more events to come, the 1,500m by his own admission possibly his best distance, before he takes on the 10km marathon swim next Friday week.
The nine previous gold medal winners include athletes Dr Pat O’Callaghan in 1928 and 1932, Bob Tisdall in 1932 and Ronnie Delany in 1956. There are the boxers Michael Carruth (1992) and Katie Taylor (2012) and swimmer Michelle Smith de Bruin (1996). And the rowers Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy and boxer Kellie Harrington added their names at the last Games in Tokyo.
Before the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, O’Callaghan had to fundraise both himself and his two brothers in order to travel, borrowing a hammer from a Swedish competitor for his second throw, which surprisingly won him the gold medal. It was a feat he repeated in Los Angeles in 1932 despite needing to carry out repairs on his throwing spikes mid competition
Tisdall had only ever raced five previous 400 metres hurdles before winning a second gold medal for Ireland in Los Angeles in 1932, an hour before O’Callaghan.
Delany was only 21 when he travelled to the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, his selection only decided by a casting vote, where against most odds he upset many pre-race favourites including the big Australian hope John Landy to in the gold medal in the 1,500 metres in an Olympic record of 3:41.2.
Ireland’s long wait for a fourth gold medal winner came, against almost all expectations, when at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Carruth went into the final of the men’s welterweight facing a formidable Cuban opponent Juan Hernández Sierra, who he deftly and brilliantly outclassed to win a first gold medal in Irish boxing.
In 1996 Smith de Bruin won three gold medals, in the 200m and 400m individual medley, and the 400m freestyle.
Two years later swimming’s international governing body Fina banned her for four years after she was found guilty of manipulating her urine sample in an out-of-competition test, saying it contained an alcohol content “in no way compatible with human consumption”.
She was found to have tampered with a urine sample taken by Irish testers Al and Kay Guy at her home in Kilkenny. The ban effectively ended her swimming career. De Bruin never failed a drugs test and has continued to insist her success was down to hard training.
The pressure and expectation on Taylor going into the 2012 London Olympics was immense, unbearable perhaps, the first Irish women’s boxer, the first time women’s boxing was at the Games, and the overwhelming gold medal favourite in the lightweight.
It took a nervy final contest against her Russian opponent Sofya Ochigava before Taylor wrote her name into history, the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal for Ireland in any sport.
Then, nine years later, there was a first Olympic gold for Irish rowing thanks to O’Donovan and McCarthy in the lightweight double sculls.
At age 27, O’Donovan also became just the third Irish man in history to win a medal in two different Olympics, adding to his silver from Rio 2016, on that occasion with older brother Gary.
Then, nine days after the rowers won gold, Harrington became our ninth gold medal winner, the then 30-year-old from north inner city Dublin fulfilling her own destiny when defeating Beatriz Ferreira from Brazil in the women’s lightweight division.
Now into that esteemed company comes Wiffen, with the promise of still more to come from him and others in Paris.
