Athletes did us proud but Olympic Games dominated by controversy

The O’Donovan brothers became the nation’s darlings, but we’ll remember the Rio Games for all the wrong reasons, writes Catherine Shanahan

Even with the Olympic Games’ notorious reputation for shattering expectations, nobody saw this coming. On the world’s biggest sporting stage, where those with more talent and grit than the rest of us gather every four years to push themselves beyond normal human limits, no one, but no one, caught sight of what was coming for Team Ireland.

While Team GB was having its best away Games ever, our own Olympians struggled to make headlines, pitted against the flow of homegrown scandal that emanated daily from Rio. And so while these Games have finally consigned Saipan to history, no Irish citizen will ever hark back to Rio 2016 without the distressing mental image of Pat Hickey in a bathrobe.