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Olympic medals

Ireland’s Daniel Wiffen celebrates with his gold medal. Picture: James Crombie/Inpho

Ireland got among the medals early in Paris, with Mona McSharry winning bronze in the women's 100m breaststroke, and Daniel Wiffen taking gold in men’s 800m freestyle.

The sight of Irish athletes on the podium - and Wiffen’s emotional reaction to the anthem and tricolour - is not something to take for granted. The medals won are the physical embodiment of years of sacrifice and dedication not just by the athletes themselves but by their families. As the late Jerry Kiernan once pointed out, young swimmers who commit to training every morning need their entire families to commit to getting them to those training sessions.

Wiffen and McSharry are different personalities - Wiffen’s robust pre-race confidence contrasts with McSharry’s doubts a couple of years ago, as she told this newspaper before the Games began. The success of both athletes should start a conversation about the shameful lack of swimming facilities in this country: whatever about Olympic medallists, thousands of children are missing out on an invaluable life skill when they miss out on the chance to learn how to swim.

A conversation that needs to end quickly, however, is the embarrassing attempts by certain outlets in a neighbouring jurisdiction to claim Daniel Wiffen as one of their athletes. It is notable that we in Ireland are not doing so with the likes of Siobhan Haughey of Hong Kong.