Pauric Lodge’s terrific commentaries on RTÉ throughout the rowing is far removed from his usual beat at various Gaelic grounds up and down the country.
But Lodge couldn’t resist falling back to his roots in making a wee comparison between Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium and the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick, both of which feature true open-air seating with no protection from rain . . . or, in this case, the sun.
If that made Lodge feel a little more at home, there was a further GAA connection at the Olympic fan zone at Chateau Vincennes in Paris where Gaelic football, hurling, camogie and women’s Gaelic football featured as part of a sports festival where the local Paris Gaels GAA Club was involved in exhibiting the games.
Of course, hurling has featured before at the Olympics . . . at the 1904 Games in St Louis when it was part of the unofficial programme of events and was won by Innisfail Hurling Club of the host city.
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Red faces at Central Statistic Office as tribute backfires
A case of being too funny perhaps? Or not at all?
That’d be the tweet from the Central Statistics Office of Ireland which bigged up the percentage of people from Skibbereen, with one in 725 people from the Cork town competing at the Paris Games compared to the national rate of one in 39,000.
Fair point, you would think . . . until you see that the graphic – with Skibbereen in red and the rest of the Republic of Ireland in white. But with Northern Ireland strangely left also covered in red and not part of it at all, almost as if it were in the sea.
Which naturally enough prompted a run of social media comments that ranged from calling the CSO tweet “bizarre”, “insulting”, “tone deaf”, “shameful” and even “partitionist”. Along with some more colourful language which told the poster/s where to go.
The CSO later corrected the map and reposted it.
Olympic Pool too shallow for record-hunters
There were five new world records recorded in swimming during the Tokyo Olympics three years ago but that number doesn’t look set to be matched in Paris, with the depth of the pool – seemingly – the issue.
The pool at La Défense Arena is something of an engineering and architectural wonder give that the arena is home to Racing 92 rugby club and is also used for concerts, with Taylor Swift performing over a series of concerts in May before it was transformed.
An Italian company – Piscine Castiglione – who also built pools for Atlanta, Beijing, London, Rio and Tokyo carried out the impressive construction work but, on this occasion, the depth of the pool at 2.15 metres is slightly less than the depth at Tokyo. Swimmers prefer a deeper pool because it results in calmer waters and faster times.
Murray exits on weirdly familiar number
As poignant and emotional as Andy Murray’s final match in a magnificent professional career proved to be as he exited stage left in Paris, it was – as his mother Judy pointed out – a tad “spooky” too.
Judy was one of those tennis mums at the small community tennis facility in Dunblane which provided the start to her son’s career, which included capturing Grand Slams and of course Olympic gold medals in London in 2012 and Rio in 2016, along with a silver in 2012 in the mixed doubles alongside Laura Robson.
However, it was the length of Murray’s final match as a pro which caught his mother’s attention . . . and its relevance to her son’s golden career.
As Judy posted on social media: “Andy’s final match lasted 77 minutes. Spooky. Wimbledon 2013 was on 7/7. It was 77 years since a Brit won the men’s singles. He named his management company 77.”
Spooky, indeed.
In Words
“With my last wave, if I could have just held on in some way to that barrel I could have won the heat but yeah it’s hindsight right now and I don’t want to beat myself up over it” – American surfer Carissa Moore after failing to get out of the heats in the defence of her title in Tahiti.
In Numbers: 12
Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz extended his unbeaten run in singles – which started at Wimbledon in his successful defence of that title – to 12 with his Olympics semi-final win over Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime.
