How can Sporting Ireland capitise on our Olympics success? What needs to be done at grassroots level?

[Manysmiles]

What can Sporting Ireland do to ensure Ireland is as successful as LA?
Interesting to read some are training in America eg Mona McSherry, Rhasidad Adeleke & Sophie O Sullivan, we need to replicate conditions here & make pay for specialised coaching.
Gymnastics & athletics are hugely popular in Ireland however many kids still can't access swimming lessons due to no pool access..
How can we up our game even further for all the pre teens & teens who hope to get the Olympics?

When you think those two fantastic gold medal winning rowers from Cork, Paul O' Donovan and Fintan Mc Carthy were getting the bus back to Cork from Dublin Airport, with their sports gear but were lucky enough to get a lift from a kind stranger don't hold your breath re funding @Manysmiles

Yeah in fairness that was disgraceful.. The women's 4 x 400m semi was a incredible display from the Irish women today, so much talent, the govt really need to invest big time

Start with the basics. Build more (or even some) swimming pools, more gymnastics and athletics training facilities and ensure young people can access them. Provide bus / bike access, so kids whose parents can’t drive them to training can still go to training. Massively ramp up PE and exercise opportunities in schools. Benchmark against other countries with similar population sizes and see what lessons can be learned and what good practices can be replicated here. And see sport/ activity for young people as a positive thing in its own right and not just as a medal generation machine.

There needs to be massive investment at grassroots level. I think a lot of sports investment for children currently goes into team sports like GAA and soccer. We need way more pools (some should be 50m, diving pools etc) and multi purpose athletics tracks. Also more sport in school and different types of sports in school (not just football...)

I lived in Germany for a while in a town the size of Athlone. There were ten pools available to the public, at least one was 50m and some were attached to a school.

Think the rowers decided themselves to travel like that as they are very chilled and dodge the limelight. Rowing has got the highest grants so don't think it was money.
Success breeds success and seeing those winners and competitors will enthuse more kids to take up stuff. That's where stars will emerge. We may also do well from new people coming to our country as, say Holland did well from Ethiopian folk so hopefully we get possible stars from new families. Some of the competitors have been determined from a young age to succeed so getting kids interested as early as possible would help. Also testing children as they grow into teens for strength etc. My dd was told in her mid 20s her resting heart rate meant she could have been an elite athlete..she just dabbled in bits and pieces and still does but maybe if we had known that we could have been more focused. Her dad was a successful sportsperson so she obviously has his genes.
That may be nonsense..l'm not sure!

Definitely agree. I absolutely loved Rtes commentary with Derval O Rourke, Sonia O Sullivan & Rob Heffernan, they were saying the same. I do think though to a point the state need to subsidise training or introductions to sports, swimming lessons are so expensive, I pay 150 per term per dc for a 30 min group lesson (8 per group) it's so expensive but it's the only available option local to us..

Definitely, the only sport played in dc's school is football, no variety at all.

Definitely, I think sports like gymnastics & diving kids do need to start very young if they are to reach world level. However a sport like athletics has lots of late bloomers & athletes who only started in secondary school.
Ireland are weak in field events so that's a huge opportunity for athletics Ireland to develop. Also parkruns are free & give all kids a chance to get involved.. So much more money needs do be invested..

My local council has stopped the local swimming clubs who use their pool from teaching learn to swim. Youngsters have to go to the council run teaching and the waiting list is huge.

Not only that, the council has closed some pools already and is significantly increasing hire costs for the swimming clubs in the area.

The same council is looking to replace two pools, neither of which will be built with viewing areas fit for swimming galas.

Grassroots swimming clubs need pools fit for galas, hire costs not increased exponentially to cripple the clubs and be able to teach youngsters to learn to swim if they’re going to help nurture future Olympians.

I think with athletics it would help if kids got to try out stuff in primary school. We used to live in south KK and local GAA would come in and do hurling at school even though the kids that were interested did hurling anyway. But nobody was coming in to do other sport. Athletics is actually on the primary PE curriculum or it was anyway.

Some schools do x country but not ours!
The public pool situation really is terrible, swimming is a life skill, it should be compulsory & state should contribute, lessons in leisure centres are too expensive, not much gets covered in half an hour...

Simon Harris has pledged an extra €400 million in sports grants on the back of Ireland's success

https://www.breakingnews.ie/olympics-2024/taoiseach-pledges-legacy-from-irelands-most-successful-olympic-games-1660117.html

Well done Simon, this is the type of investment we need. All kids should be able to find a sport that suits them whether it's archery, fencing, swimming or athletics..!

I live in the US in a suburban area near a major city.

The sports facilities of the local high school would put UCD to shame.

Two pools, one for girls, one for boys.
Two full depth diving wells, one in each pool.

Two full-size basketball courts, eight badminton courts, indoor tennis courts, indoor running track and equipped for all track and field events (pole vaulting, high jump, javelin, etc), climbing walls, volleyball courts - all in field house in two separate areas. Plus two gymnastics gyms and wrestling gyms, and a fully equipped exercise gym with treadmills, weight machines, stationery bikes, rowing machines, etc, where students learn how to use all the equipment and spend a semester having their overall fitness tracked.

Outdoor running track, long jump, baseball field; two hockey/ lacrosse/ soccer fields; American football field plus stadium. Outdoor tennis courts.

Plus all the shower rooms and changing rooms and lockers needed.

The school makes students do PE every day. They rotate through swimming/ diving, gymnastics, dance, team sports (basketball, volleyball), general fitness (gym), racquet sports, health (classroom), driving (in school cars and driving lab), track and field, adventure ed (kayaks in pool, climbing wall, basic first aid) over eight semesters.

Teachers are paid $10k per year extra if they coach an extracurricular sport. There is also a large PE staff.

The local area has use of the high school facilities, and there are numerous sports organisations offering opportunities for kids to get involved in sport - Tball (leading to baseball and softball), pee wee football (leads to flag and American football), swimming lessons and teams. There are opportunities to join travel teams and train amd compete more intensively as kids get older, but this is something parents have to roll up their sleeves for. Local youth sports are run and coached by volunteers.

The local park district runs two outdoor pools in summer, plus one indoor pool and a year-round rink. Ice hockey is huge here. Local parks have superb tennis courts and basketball courts, baseball diamonds, and soccer pitches.

All it takes is money...
And expertise.

The wider area has lots of public facilities too, including several 50m pools.

Not every high school or locality in the state or elsewhere in the US has all of the above, nor have all of the great local facilities resulted in a steady stream of Olympians (though the school has produced a few, both symmer and winter, and the local area always has several), but equipping Irish schools and localities with good and accessible facilities (physically and financially) would make a difference in many lives regardless of whether it turned into a pipeline to the Olympics.

Exercise gyms in all secondary schools would be a good start.

When I was in school (Dublin suburb, 1970s to 80s) we had a hockey pitch that was used a lot through ghastly weather, two putdoor tennis courts/ basketball court that were used two weeks per year, and one football field.

Thanks to the efforts of the PE teacher, we were able to go (by public bus) to another school to use their pool for swim lessons once a week for an eight week session. I remember almost freezing to death waiting for the two busses I had to take to get home from that pool, at rush hour in early December.

Take the money from the greyhound subsidy and put it toward paid coaching positions. John Coughlan used to work with Meath football, he just helped Puerto Rico win a gold.

That high school sounds amazing @mathanxiety
Is it a public school ( in the Irish sense not the UK meaning ) or a private school ?

Yes it's a pity our talented coaches have to leave to recieved paid positions.