History made as Mullingar prevails over Mexico
TV VIEW:‘IT’S MULLINGAR v Mexico,” as Jimmy Magee billed John Joe Nevin’s fight against Oscar Valdez Fierro last night, which, to the average Olympic viewer, seemed like an fairly unfair contest, Mick Dowling adding to our concern when he conceded “if there was trouble in a pub I’d rather have Valdez on my side”.
In the end, though, John Joe prevailed in the bar brawl, leaving the nation dripping in (at least) bronze.
Woooooot! We’re on the medal table and, as McFadden and Whitehead once put it, “ain’t no stoppin’ us now, we’re on the move…we’ve got the groove”.
Today? Over to you, Annalise Murphy and Katie Taylor, but as McFadden and Whitehead would have put it, if they lived long enough, “whatever happens, you’re both, totally and seriously awesome”.
Like the Usain Bolt fella.
“I’m fast, baby, all day, every day,” said Bill O’Herlihy, which would have led to late RTÉ tuner-inners saying “Jeez, Bill!”
But fret not, that was just Bill repeating what Usain had said after his semi-final, after he eased to victory in a manner that left you declaring “oh crikey”.
Some time later? George Hamilton’s commentary on the 100m final? “Usain… winner.”
He’s fast, baby, all day. And you can’t but feel blessed to be sportingly alive when this fella is doing his thing. A mile or three beyond magnificent, he’s a grade A sparkly gem. Better still, with a smile on his face.
Meanwhile we’re all, as if there’s even any need to say it, chuffed out of our minds for our dripping-in-gold neighbours. But no matter how good a tune might be, when it starts playing on a loop, as God Save the Queen has been the last day or five, it reaches a point where if you hear it one more time you want to plug your ears with cement.
Our golden day will come, hang in there, but until then we’ll just have to piggy-back on Britain’s goldie ecstasy and be happy for them. In a big-hearted and generous way. Come on, come on, we can do it.
And we also have to concede that they’ve gone some way towards debunking that widely-held theory that they can only win medals in sitting-down sports – cycling, rowing, sailing and the like. Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah, Andy Murray and Co saw to that in their standy-up events.
“This is… this is… this is just…,” gasped Timmy Henman, struggling to find the words yesterday as Murray went two sets and 4-2 up in his Olympic final against Swiss also-ran Roger Federer.
