Bad news from Paris. Hope you’re sitting down. It is our solemn duty to inform you that Ireland will not win an Olympic medal today.
After racking them up at a rate of one every 24 hours for the past week – culminating in Daniel Wiffen’s bronze in the pool last night – there are none on offer on this benighted Monday.
We’ll probably spare Team Ireland a tribunal of inquiry, all the same.
Wiffen’s bronze in the 1,500m freestyle makes this officially the most successful Irish Olympics ever. When Kellie Harrington sorts out tomorrow whether hers is to be gold or silver, it will be the seventh medal of the games. That beats the previous record of six in London in 2012.
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First among equals is Wiffen, the 23-year-old from Down/Armagh/Whatever you’re having yourself, who added bronze to his gold from the 800m freestyle event last Tuesday. That makes him the first Irishman in history to win more than one medal at a single Olympics. That makes him eternal, whatever the rest of his career has in store.
On a raucous night in La Défense Arena, he chased home a world record swim by Bobby Finke of the USA.
The greatest measure of how expectations have ballooned over the week is the fact that he had to be asked afterwards if he was sad not to have done better. And the fact he had to concede that part of him definitely was.
“Overall, I’m very pleased with my week,” Wiffen said. “I wish it was reversed, that I won the gold on the last night and the bronze on the third day. Obviously we had some high aspirations coming into this week, I was able to secure at least one gold medal so I’ve got to be very proud of myself.
“I’m not going to lie, Nathan [his twin brother] is probably disappointed. I didn’t really say much because we know we both want gold and obviously came a bit short with bronze, but we’ll look over the whole week. I’ll talk to him after this and see what he’s thinking. He’s thinking probably the same thing as me. That damn, I missed an opportunity there. I don’t know what else to say. We won gold, we won bronze, we got two medals. Yeah, it’s just great.
“My skills were absolutely terrible at the end as well because I was just on my arse dying. But you know, I’m happy. As I said, bronze medal.”
And so, Paris 2024, the Irish score so far: Three gold medals. Three bronze medals. Either a silver or a gold to come. Four different sports on the board. A heady 14th place on the Sunday night medals table.
The greatest week in Irish Olympic history.
