olympic future

after one person being a drug cheat and our best medal hope being lapped and finishing last ( both from cork btw ;) ) where do we go from here....

lets face it, irelands most popular sports aren't in the olympics, rugby, gaelic football, hurling, golf.......all very popular and we have some amazing talent in them, athletes isn't very big in this country and the structures aren't there to help the potential anyway. add gymnastics, etc in there as well......

soccer could be a hope, with all the quality young players we have, we didn't send a team......

so where do we go from here, i think its time decent money was invested in sport at school level as it is in the uk and the rest of europe........

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Originally Posted by max power

soccer (sic) ... we didn't send a team.

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We didn't qualify. It goes on the under 20s world cup or something.

i thought it was anunder23 team with 2 overage players, thus that united defender going with argentina...

If we're to compete they need to introduce sports like Darts, Rings, Road Bowling and Joy Riding.
No doubt the Yanks and the Chinese would develop drugs for those sports too :D

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Originally Posted by max power

i thought it was anunder23 team with 2 overage players

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But I think the qualification is done on the under 20s.

well that has to be the most stupid qualification i've ever heard of :confused:

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Originally Posted by max power

i thought it was anunder23 team with 2 overage players, thus that united defender going with argentina...

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It's down to Uefa

The final four teams in the UEFA u21 championships go into the Olympics, the only time this won't occur is when the Olympics are staged in Europe in which case the host nation autopmatically qualifies.

Italy are the current u21 Euro champs, Serbia and Monenegro runners up, Portugal beat Sewden in the third place play-off. Because Greece were hosting the olympics, they replaced Sweden in the tournament.

The South Americans tend to hand-pick an u23 team (which is allowed) as they take the tournament much more seriously

I'd say last desparate chance at a medal this week may be in showjumping & is debatable if that should be an Olympic sport as could be greyhound racing next time then :eek:

Should come as no surprise that no progress in Athletics as its like football in that all the best younbg talent go abroad (US for runners) to be trained. Its no surprise that the only events we do reasonable well in are linked to cross country running (a big field is a good facility for that).

Do we have any relay teams in Olympics this time as I thought we were doing ok in 400m relay & similar in recent years...?