Dishing out the food of champions

AN Irishman is enjoying his third Olympic Games and while his performances in Beijing are not being flashed around the world on giant screens, they certainly make him a winner among sportsmen.

Garry Leahy, 47, who now lives in Sydney but is originally from Ballinlough in Cork city, is a head chef in the athletes’ village, where he oversees the creation of up to 48,000 meals a day.

The father-of-two made his Olympics debut in 2000 in Sydney, the city where he and his family have been based since 1989.

“Each Games get bigger and bigger and this is the busiest so far,” he said.

“We served 42,000 meals yesterday and the forecast for today is that it could hit 48,000. The next few days we are at our peak then it will drop slowly after that.”

His role as head chef is set to continue through to the Paralympics, delaying his return home to Australia to see his wife Marie, and children, Amy, 22, and 18-year-old Callie.

Marie, a Turners Cross native, said she believes her husband is secretly enjoying all of the attention he is receiving from around the world and is living a life of luxury amongst the athletes.

“He’s getting a lot of attention,” she said. “He’s had newspapers onto him and he was interviewed on radio back home in Cork.

“He’s cooking up a storm putting stuff through, but he loves the pressure. He’ll be high on adrenaline from now on until the end.

“He’s really well set up out there too. He has a beautiful two-bed apartment there in the Olympic village and a flat-screen television and an en suite, and all the rest.”

The athlete’s village food section has to cater to more than 28,000 athletes, coaches, and staff from all over the world. The massive venue, which is the same size as three soccer pitches, seats 6,000 at a time.

Catering at the Olympic village is provided by a large US food and general services company, Aramark, together with a Beijing partner.

It serves some traditional Chinese dishes and other Asian-influenced foods, including Peking duck, congee (an Asian rice porridge), and a variety of noodles. It also offers pizza, Mediterranean food and dishes from the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe.

The variety of appetites to be catered for was illustrated earlier this week when it emerged superstar swimmer Michael Phelps is munching his way through 12,000 calories in a variety of colourful meals each day, while Irish swimmer, Michelle Nocher, has eaten spaghetti bolognaise for seven nights running because she “doesn’t work well with too many foreign foods”.

One of the favourite dishes among the athletes is peking duck.

To prepare the delicacy properly, Aramark has hired chefs from one of Beijing’s oldest roast duck restaurants, Quanjude.