Hickey: Northern Irish athletes are free to represent Ireland at Olympics

NORTHERN Irish athletes will be free to represent Ireland at the Athens Olympics if they chose to do so.

That was the promise from the President of the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI), Pat Hickey, who last night said that if an athlete from Northern Ireland wished to compete for Great Britain in the Olympics he or she would be free to do so, but the OCI was not prepared to allow the statutes of the British Olympic Association (BOA) to have Northern Ireland included in the title.

This came to the notice of the OCI last November and when verbal clarification was not forthcoming from the BOA, the OCI sent a letter seeking clarification.

Ironically, the row flared up as the backers of London 2012 had been to meet the OCI seeking support.

When the Olympic Games were last held in London in 1948 there was a row when the Irish team were forced to march under the title Eire.

“We represent the island of Ireland. We are the Olympic Council of Ireland and not the Olympic Council of the Republic of Ireland,” Mr Hickey said.

He also claimed the OCI could not accept the Great Britain dismissal of the matter as “a storm in a teacup”, insisting that they saw it as an effort to effect change by stealth.

“We know for a fact that the statute is on the table at the OCI headquarters in Lausanne with two question marks ­ one concerning Ireland and one concerning Gibraltar - so obviously the Spanish Olympic Committee have a problem with it as well,” he said.

He pointed out that 10 to 15% of each Irish Olympic team is comprised of athletes from Northern Ireland and some of those athletes would not achieve the more stringent standards in Great Britain. “We are not going to allow those athletes to be discriminated against,” he said.