London beckons

A round-up of today's other stories in brief

Focus sport: Boxing

Given it represents our best medal hopes in London, it’s worth recalling that boxing is actually one of those sports that can be traced right back to the ancient Olympiads, or at least the later ones.

According to my dusty old Olympic books, boxing proved one of the most popular sports then, too, with competitors training before the Games in the Palaestra area of Olympia, by men who had “pronounced muscular physiques”.

The early rules of boxing were defined by Onomastos, of Smyrna, who was the first ever boxing champion, at the 23rd Olympiad, in 668 BC.

A special place is reserved in the ancient Olympic history for the Diagoras family, from Rhodes, who in the fifth century BC, claimed victories by father, three sons, and two grandsons.

However, despite this long tradition, boxing wasn’t included in the first modern Olympics, in Athens in 1896, and instead the first modern champions were crowned in St Louis in 1904 – including flyweight champion George Finnegan, of the USA. He beat countryman Miles Burke, who was allowed to compete despite being four pounds overweight. No such allowances, one suspects, for the Irish boxers in London.

London Spectator – TheBMXBeat at Olympic Park, August 8th-10th

Bicycle Motocross, as it’s officially known, began to take off in the late 1960s in California, and although Bob Haro is best remembered for the freestyle version, the actually racing aspect was once the fasting growing sport in the world, and still hugely popular with the X-Games generation.

It became a full Olympic sport in Beijing four years ago, and proved hugely popular – especially for those Irish journalists who once raced in the old Phoenix Park course, back in the 1980s.

London’s purpose-built 400-metre BMX track is located right next to the Velodrome, in the north of the Olympic Park. The entire venue covers a total area of 160mx90m, or slightly larger than the size of a football pitch, and will see 48 competitors (32 men and 16 women) compete over three days, August 8th to 10th.

The course is designed as fast and challenging, featuring an eight-metre high ramp at the start, followed by jumps, bumps and tightly banked corners. After the Games, the temporary seating will be removed and the BMX Track will be reconfigured to make it suitable for riders of all ages and abilities.

Britain boasts the big gold medal hope in the women’s competition in Shanaze Reade. She won her fourth World Championship gold medal in five years in 2011, however Reade went to Beijing as favourite for gold, too, but crashed out in the final when trying an overtaking manoeuvre.

The competition begins with a series of qualifying heats, before the drama of a winner-takes-all one-run final. Both the men’s and women’s competitions begin with a time trial to seed competitors for the elimination phase. The rider with the quickest time earns top seeding for the elimination phase, and so on. The semi-finals are held over three runs, in which the top four riders will advance to the final.

How to get there: London Underground, Stratford (Jubilee and Central lines), around 15-minute walk; West Ham (District and Hammersmith City lines), around 25-minute walk; Docklands Light Railway (DLR) Stratford, around 15-minute walk, Stratford International, around 15-minute walk.

Documenting what is needed to get that bit better

No one can deny that special combination of talent and dedication required to become an Olympian, those countless tales of inspiration, many of them beautifully catalogued over the past few months. But it might be better to steer clear of next Tuesday’s documentary on RTÉ One, Faster, Higher, Stronger, at least if you don’t want to hear me pose the question: how much of all this can we actually believe in?

The whole purpose of the documentary is to examine what exactly is required to go “faster, higher, stronger” on the Olympic stage, and whether some of the methods and techniques of going about it are entirely fair. And that’s before we even get to the dodgy stuff.

Without spoiling too much, this journey actually begins in September 1988, the moment Ben Johnson tests positive for anabolic steroids, some 48 hours after winning the Olympic 100 metres in Seoul.

Right there, so much of sport’s credibility is suddenly lost, and given all that’s happened since, some might say irreparably so.

The journey is then fast-forwarded to January 2012, the moment Martin Fagan tests positive for EPO, an athlete on the verge of qualifying for a second successive Olympic marathon, but crippled by physical and mental breakdown, is, as he admits himself, “taken to the dark side”.

What exactly took him there? Six months on, Fagan is not looking for any forgiveness, but perhaps illustrates that the elite athlete sometimes lives in a shadowy world. Who really knows? What is certain is that the line between “sport” and “science” has become increasingly blurred, and as the modern athlete looks more towards science and technology to enhance their performance, it may be that the so-called purity of sport is indeed lost forever.

Along the way I meet plenty of people who say that yes it is, or no, it isn’t – or that at least are clear in their own minds about what’s fair and what’s not: Colin Griffin, who has qualified for his second Olympics in the 50km walk, is among the subjects who willingly outlines the lengths, or rather heights, he has gone to in order to reach a peak in London, and that living at 10,000 feet, in the heart of Limerick, is perfectly natural, at least as far as he’s concerned.

The journey also takes in a cheese factory in west Cork, a field of very large cattle in Co Laois, and the centre for preventive doping in Cologne, Germany, and in the end it’s quite clear that no athlete can expect to train and thrive on bread alone.

In the end the only way to answer question of whether or not the banned drugs actually work, and what exactly are the risks, was to take some myself, and I can’t say I wasn’t a little disappointed with the outcome there.

– IAN O'RIORDAN

London's a twitter

Faster, Higher, Stronger, is on RTÉ One, Tuesday 9.35pm

Darren O’Neill @DarrenONeil

On board Aer Lingus flight looking at myself in Cara magazine :D strange :) ?#betterturnmyphoneoff

LaShawn Merritt @lashawnmerritt

Be More Concerned Of Your Character Than Your Rep, Because Your Character is Wat U Really Are, Your Rep Is Merely What Others Think

Cisco UK Ireland @CiscoUKI

74% of Chinese think hosting Olympics has given them an economic boost. Only 19% of Brits think London 2012 will do same.

Paddy Barnes @paddyb_ireland

At the airport to leave for Olympics and @mickconlan11 has forgot his passport hahahahahahahahahaha

Cian O’Connor @Cian_O_Connor

I’m overwhelmed with the extraordinary amount of support I’ve received from fans, friends and colleagues

Pippa O’ConnorOrmond @pipsypie

So delighted for my brother @Cian_O_Connor