Blase about Beijing? Let me tell you some stories

ATHLETICS:For all the cynicism and world-weariness, when you get to meet and talk to some of our Olympic hopefuls it's impossible to dismiss the Games, writes Ian O'Riordan.

SO TWO weeks from today the opening ceremony will be history, and let the chaos begin. Reporting from the Olympics can be a rough-enough business, but as with the other oldest profession on earth, someone has to do it.

Call me perverse then, because I'm all excited. If you've got the ticket, take the ride. There are probably better ways to make a living but this is good enough for now - even if a fortnight of hustling for a decent quote and a good yarn is what some people call the marking from hell.

Just last weekend I asked a fellow reporter if he was looking forward to the Olympics. His expression of complete horror said it all, as if we were in fact flying into Darfur rather than Beijing. He then told me his excitement levels had yet to rise above zero. Sorry for asking.

During the week I heard two other reporters say they didn't like the Olympics. Simple as that.

Fair enough, but surely then it's time to retire to the attic to write the next great Irish novel. Or maybe they can file some Olympic stuff from home.

Everyone knows the Olympics are a shadow of the event they were once intended to be. If you've completely given up on them, there's little point being there. I don't see the Olympics as much more inspiring than the Irish Schools Athletics Championships, but I know what they mean to the athletes, and they're the sole reason any of us are going there to begin with.

I know of one athlete who would give his right leg to be on the plane to Beijing. I know of another who is on the plane, but would give her left leg to be able to run on her right leg (this will make sense later on). I know a lot of tears have been shed this week over the realisation the Olympics don't just come around once every four years - more like once in a lifetime.

The three additional athletes selected for Beijing on the basis of their B-standard qualifying marks certainly sent emotions flying - high, and low. This should have been a victory story yet inevitably there were losers. So we ended up with rumours of raw deals and favouritism and lies and, of course, politics.

Thomas Chamney is going to Beijing to run the 800 metres, and David Campbell is not. Because they have only the B standard, there was no way they could both go - so it had to be decided on who won the national title in Santry last Sunday.

One of them was planning to run there, the other wasn't. One was told to come home, the other was asked for his passport number. If they took the hint, this was their Olympic trial. One took the hint, the other didn't.

At least that's the bottom line, because even with hindsight, there's no way of telling the level of certainty ahead of that race that B standards were to be considered. Definitely? Maybe?

Chamney knew he had to win and he did. Campbell knew he had to win too, but if he knew he had to win to go to Beijing, he would have run differently. So who had the advantage? The athlete resting up at home or the one who took a nine-hour train journey and late-night flight to make it home?

Perhaps the situation could have been handled a little better, and to paraphrase Saul Bellow, politics are politics and sport is sport but in Ireland they occasionally overlap.

But it's not fair to say politics are the sole reason why Chamney, Michelle Carey and Pauline Curley are going to Beijing. Sonia O'Sullivan may have been campaigning for one and Brian Cowen for another (that's rumour too, by the way) but they each ran standards recognised by the IAAF and are therefore entitled to go.

I do feel sorry for Campbell, simply because the leg injury he sustained earlier in the year has clearly hampered his season (and he would now give that leg to be going to Beijing) - but not as sorry as I feel for Joanne Cuddihy, who is going to Beijing hoping to run the 400 metres but right now can run on one leg only.

Cuddihy represents all that is good about Irish athletics at present. A brilliant talent, honest, affable, charming and elegant, she's everything you'd want to find in an athlete, and more.

Last year, she put her medical studies on hold to maximise her potential in Beijing, moved to Loughborough, England, and dreamed big. And it could all snap apart right now like a piece of string stretched across a scissors.

I've seen a lot of special things in covering this sport, and one I won't easily forget was in Osaka last summer, when Cuddihy came off the track, exhausted, after finishing fourth in the World Championship semi-final. She didn't yet know her time, and I got to tell her: "50.73." She collapsed into the arms of her father, Bill Cuddihy. This was world class, and she knew it.

Beijing was to take her to the next level, the ultimate level. It was all going according to plan until her back gave out at the start of the summer. Then a knee went. She now has a calf-muscle strain, and unless that improves greatly in the next two weeks, she won't be running in the Olympics - not this time, and maybe not ever.

"If I felt I didn't have a shot, I wouldn't put myself through this," she says. "I had the best winter training ever. It's just been a nightmare summer. I've just tried not to lose the plot. There have been periods there when things were back on the up. I'm fit, because I'm doing everything I can to stay fit, albeit with alternative methods. I'm probably fitter than I've ever been. But it's the race sharpness I'm lacking, the ability to run injury-free.

"But I'm not the sob story. So many athletes, every year, get injured. And people have it a lot worse than me. A friend of mine has an injury now where her whole season is a write-off.

"You have to stay strong. It's hard enough, and you can't lose the head as well. I was doing all the right things, and then one by one, things started to go wrong. In the end you're hanging by a string. I still have that string, and have got to hang on.

"If I walked away now, it could be the stupidest decision of my life. I also know after the Olympics I will need to take a step back, a breather.

"You do sport for fun, but I'd be lying if I said any of this was fun. But you go through these parts to get back to the parts that you can remember, and how brilliant the sport is. The days when you perform your best, and how great that is. I do want to get that again."

Cuddihy (24) will soon return to her medical studies, and talk of London 2012 is certainly no consolation. Eileen O'Keeffe has suddenly found herself in a similar situation, and unless her knee injury improves, she too could miss the hammer in Beijing.

Neither of them will give up without a serious fight. The Olympics come round once every four years, and talking this week with the athletes lucky enough to be going there, and those unlucky enough not to be, you realise that might as well be once in a lifetime.

But that's enough of the mushy stuff. If you've got the ticket, take the ride.