Flying the flag: Reliving Ireland’s golden days of Olympic glory

THE Winter Olympic Games opened in Vancouver, Canada, early this morning (Irish time). The controversy over the Irish bobsleigh team prompted memories of earlier controversies about Irish participation in the Olympics.

In a timely book, Gold, Silver and Green, Kevin McCarthy covers phenomenal Irish successes at the early modern Games (see review in today’s Weekend). The next summer Olympics will be in London in two years’ time, but no one could dare expect Irish-born athletes to perform as successfully as when the Olympics were first held in London in 1908. Irish-born competitors won 37 Olympic medals that year.

Many may recall the sensational incident at the 1968 Games in Mexico, where two American athletes gave a black power salute after being presented with their medals for the 200 meters. Both stood without shoes as an expression of black poverty. Each also wore a black glove on one hand. Tommie Smith, the gold medal winner, also wore a black scarf, while John Carlos, the bronze medallist, wore a necklace of beads, which he said “were for those individuals that were lynched, or killed and that no one said a prayer for”.