Team Ireland following Paris path laid down by generations of Olympic 'influencers'

Over 130 athletes will wear Irish singlets, swimming caps or jerseys in Paris this summer. Every one of them will have come across sections of their path littered with small but significant crumbs left by someone who had come before them.

INFLUENCED: Team Ireland Boxer Jack Marley pictured during the team day for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at The Crowne Plaza Hotel in Blanchardstown, Dublin. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

Jack Marley was just about old enough to vote when Bernard Dunne invited him into the Irish Athletic Boxing Association’s high-performance unit out at Sports Campus Ireland on Dublin’s northside.

The journey itself, a half-hour drive around three-quarters of the city’s M50 motorway from his club in Monkstown, wasn’t exactly a trek. Look at it another way and it was a quantum leap, even for a kid of his class.