Irish team for Turin selected

WINTER OLYMPICS: The Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI) have announced the four Irish qualifiers who will travel to the Winter Olympics in Turin, which open on February 10th. There is still a slim hope that the women's bobsleigh team of Siobhán and Aoife Hoey will receive a late call up ahead of the final closing date next Monday, although that looks unlikely.

The late qualification of Wicklow's David Connolly means Ireland will again have a competitor in the skeleton discipline, the event in which Clifton Wrottesley famously missed out on a medal by a fraction of a second at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Connolly (25) achieved the difficult Olympic standard at the last Olympic qualifying event in Konigsee, Germany, earlier this week, and for now completes the Irish team line-up headed for Turin. He joins the country's leading skiers Kirsty McGarry from Dublin, Thos Foley from Kerry, and Rory Morrish from Cork.

Wrottesley is now acting as the Irish team manager and chef de mission. Announcing the team yesterday, OCI president Pat Hickey said that the small but select squad had shown total commitment in their quest to represent Ireland.

"For a non-alpine nation, Ireland's growing stature in winter sports is remarkable," he said, "and one in which we have an excellent sporting future. More and more Irish people are taking winter sports holidays and this has fuelled the interest in a major way."

The Hoey sisters, however, have unfortunately found themselves just outside the qualification mark for the women's bobsleigh. Despite their efforts over the past year, they currently lie 16th on the Olympic-ranking list, with only the first 15 gaining entry to the Games. They are now relying on the withdrawal of one of the crews ahead of them to get their place.

Turin also marks the first official appointment for the OCI's new chief executive Stephen Martin: "We plan to build on the competitive experience of Turin in order to develop a more diverse squad for the Vancouver Winter Olympics of 2010," he said.

"We have already had preliminary meetings with the Irish Sports Council to develop a strategy for identifying and funding a small, focused group of winter athletes. For instance, we hope for Vancouver to add qualifiers in disciplines such as curling, snowboarding, bob skeleton and even ice skating"

Ireland thus becomes the 74th nation to announce a team travelling to Turin, where around 2,500 athletes will be competing in the 15 different winter sports. Turin has built 11 major centres in the city and the surrounding Piedmont Alpine region for the Games, which run from February 10th to 26th.

The opening ceremony will take place in the Turin Olympic Stadium and the Irish flag bearer at the ceremony will be 20-year-old McGarry.

The Dublin skier follows in the tracks of her sister Tamsin, who was the first woman to represent Ireland at a Winter Olympics and also the Irish flag bearer at the opening ceremony of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.