Podcast Corner: Takeaways from episode one of Where is George Gibney?
This is the culmination of a two-year investigation for Mark Horgan, a producer on the sports podcast Second Captains and presenter and co-producer, with Ciarán Cassidy, of this series. Gibney is a former Irish swimming coach who was accused of 27 child sexual abuse charges. Gibney never stood trial following a ruling by the Supreme Court of Ireland in 1993, and is believed to be living in the US.
Horgan explains that, in 2018, they were reporting on two scandals involving children in sport at the hands of Barry Bennell in the UK and Larry Nasser in the US.
Playing clips of two stars who faced down these abusers, Horgan says it reminded him of a case closer to home, where the perpetrator had actually coached one of the Second Captains presenters, Ken Early. Early says: "He was a strange kind of guy, he was one of these quite calm-seeming people."
Fellow presenter Eoin McDevitt asks Early: "Did he exude this kind of power or authority?" Early: "Well he did, but a lot of it is by reputation... You already know this is George Gibney, he's the top coach, he coaches the national team, he's the top man."
"That's 100% George Gibney." It takes over four minutes of this inaugural episode of the 10-part investigative series for that name to be mentioned. It comes from Horgan who we hear is sitting outside the house of a man they say vanished 25 years ago and whose current neighbours now know as 'John'.
It's 6am when the garage door opens and Horgan and a companion subsequently tail their suspect - "my heart's pounding". It's the stuff of high-spy drama that pulls the listener in from the start.
Fresh from working with Taylor Swift on Folklore, with hushed piano keys and skittering drums, there's a hint of that album's track 'Seven' about the ghostly theme tune for Where is George Gibney?
O'Toole, who Horgan proclaims as a phenomenon, listens back to interviews from the 1970s when he was a child prodigy swimmer. It's the first time he's heard/watched them, he reveals, adding that he can't remember doing them.
Gibney is behind him in numerous interviews, we're told, and indeed talks of O'Toole's early promise. O'Toole tells Horgan: "He's quite convincing when you watch this video in isolation. He just seems like a man who's committed to sport, and that's what's so scary about this."
Horgan travels to Miami, Florida, to chat with Chalkey White, who we hear was the first person to ask O'Toole if he had suffered any abuse at the hands of Gibney. Chalkey was, like O'Toole, a child prodigy, having won the Liffey Swim at age 11.
Horgan expresses surprise that Chalkey doesn't eat lunch. It goes back to his time as a child, he says - you'd never eat lunch before you train in the afternoon.
