Enda McEvoy: New heroes should stir lost interest in athletics

We’d never heard of Israel Olatunde four days ago and now we know everything about him and suddenly we’re all Olatunde experts and we have his path to Olympic glory mapped out

NEW HERO: Ireland’s Israel Olatunde gets the Mens 4x400m team off to a fast start yesterday. Pic: INPHO/Morgan Treacy

And so in the dog days of late summer, amid heat and drought and fires in cornfields and biblical rain, he came to us in our hour of crisis. The saviour Ireland didn’t know it needed.

Israel Olatunde. You hadn’t heard of him until four days ago. Don’t be ashamed to admit it. Neither had I.