There is a pleasing symmetry in recalling that it is exactly a century since the very first Irish team competed at the Olympic Games, and that it did so in the very same city which is now gearing up to host what promises to be a spectacular opening ceremony.
In 1924, a newly-independent Ireland sent 48 athletes to Paris to compete in seven events. Two of them came home with medals in disciplines that no longer exist. Oliver St John Gogarty won a bronze medal for his poem ‘Ode to the Tailteann Games’, while Jack B Yeats won silver in art for .
That painting has particular resonance as the focus today will be on the River Seine: A flotilla of athletes will sail down the city’s famous river, passing such landmarks as Notre Dame Cathedral and the Louvre Museum. Some 300,000 spectators have been invited to watch, but none of them will be leaning against the quays as they are in the Yeats painting.
A 6km security barrier has been put in place along the river bank as part of an unprecedented security operation. That is a sad fact of modern events where the risk of terrorist attacks is ever present.
At least one potential flashpoint, the Israel versus Mali soccer game which ended in a 1-1 draw at Parc des Princes stadium on Wednesday night, passed off with little more than booing from some spectators while the Israeli national anthem was being played.
Paris, however, was not taking any chances. Some 1,000 members of the French police were on duty at the stadium, a substantial presence that will be replicated at events throughout the games.
For tonight’s opening ceremony, for instance, an estimated 45,000 police and gendarmes will be joined by 10,000-plus soldiers and 20,000 private security officers.
A total of 56 Garda officers have also been drafted in to help ensure a peaceful Games.
Let us hope that the figures making the headlines between now and August 11 will be the ones describing the prowess and achievements of the 10,000 athletes taking part, including Team Ireland.
For France, the Olympic Games offer a much-needed opportunity to ignite some joie de vivre following a snap election in which the far right was narrowly defeated. ‘Ouf’, the French slang word for ‘phew’, is the word of the moment, but over the coming weeks it will be replaced with the exclamations of joy, admiration, and awe that accompany sport at its highest level.
Here, the country will rally behind Team Ireland and its 133 athletes. Sport must be the single-greatest unifying force there is and the Paris Games offer an unrivalled opportunity to come together at this particularly divided time.
There is one more statistic worthy of note. This year’s Games boast a 50/50 gender balance, one that is almost replicated in the Irish team, which has 64 female athletes and 69 male athletes. That’s another reason to celebrate. Now, let the Games begin.
In 1992, she was blacklisted — or cancelled, as we’d say now — when she ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on the American TV show . After performing the Bob Marley song ‘War’, she fixed her gaze on the camera, tore the Pope’s picture, and uttered the immortal words: “Fight the real enemy.”
It was, she said, her way of casting light on the abuse perpetrated by the Catholic Church.
Complaints flooded in. The TV network NBC banned her for life and, 13 days later, she faced a hostile, booing audience when she sang at a tribute concert for Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden in New York.
But slowly, slowly, attitudes shifted. By 2020, magazine had reinvented her as a “prescient messenger”, and celebrated her courage in provoking necessary, though deeply uncomfortable, conversations.
She will be remembered in many different ways today. We should not, however, underestimate how her lonely act on American TV emboldened so many other victims of Church abuse to speak out about their experience.
Some might welcome news that Boeing has finalised a guilty plea to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge and agreed to pay a $243.6m (€224m) fine after it breached a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement with the US Justice Department.
A plea of guilty sounds like the aircraft manufacturer is owning up to its catalogue of blatant safety breaches which led to the avoidable deaths of 346 people in two Max crashes in 2018 and 2019. But, as the families of victims rightly say, the fine is nowhere near approaching justice.
Those families, including Cork woman Naoise Connolly Ryan, whose husband Mick Ryan was killed in 2019, say the current and former company executives should be criminally charged and held accountable for their actions.
At a time when the company is facing questions about the safety of its planes, justice needs to be seen to be done. Just last week, an engine fire on a Delta Airlines 767 transatlantic flight from Edinburgh forced an emergency landing.
It is vital that the company is now held to account. If justice is not done, how can we ensure the safety of the flying public?
