Paris Olympics, one year on: ‘It's a very difficult pill to swallow. It probably always will be'

Irish Times

a day ago

A year ago, an army of 136
Olympians
marched into your livingroom. They occupied your telly and made your phone beep. They led the news bulletins and your small talk. You were on first-name terms. You said you would never forget
Paris
. Do you remember?
Have you thought about them much since? For a sun-kissed fortnight the greatest Olympics in
100 years of Ireland at the Games
was a lavish banquet for national morale. In sport's great sushi bar, though, the carousel keeps turning and soon there were other tasty plates under your eyes. You were hungry again, for something else.
Moving on was easy for you. For the athletes, it is rarely so simple. The year after the Olympics is tricky. It's like Wile E Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons, his legs still spinning as he runs off a cliff. For the athletes, the Olympics had been the ground under their feet, not just for two weeks, but for years. Then it is cut from under them.
'There's always an anticlimax,' says Eoin Rheinisch, a three-time Olympian, and Head of Performance Life Skills at the Institute of Sport. 'You're waiting for this thing to happen for years and then it's over so quickly. There's a coming down period for everyone involved, even for the medallists, because eventually that limelight comes off them a little bit.
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'It's the ones who are ready to set a new goal who get on with it, but a lot of people struggle with that. For first-time Olympians – and this was certainly my experience – you come back, and you haven't thought about what's next. Everything has been focused on this one thing for so long.
'Then you come home and for me, personally, the following year felt like a complete disaster. I really struggled to be motivated by any of the usual [canoe slalom] races you'd go to – World Cups or World Championships or Europeans. They're just not as big as the Olympic Games.'
After the Olympics, everybody has a different landing. Seven medals was a record haul for Ireland at the Paris Games but that was the tip of the pyramid. Underneath were the usual stories of missed targets and broken dreams. Most of those athletes just flashed before our eyes.
Aifric Keogh, chair of the Olympic Federation of Ireland Athletes Commission, at the federation's AGM in Dublin in July. Photograph: Seb Daly/Sportsfile
In boxing, Kellie Harrington won gold for the second Olympics in a row, but Ireland sent a team of 10 boxers to Paris, and the others won just one bout between them. In rowing Aifric Keogh and Fiona Murtagh expected to win a medal and, in the event, they didn't even reach the final of the women's pairs.
Outcomes like that cannot be swallowed whole. The chewing makes your jaws sore.
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'I personally felt I was in better shape in Paris that I was in Tokyo,' says Keogh, who was part of the women's four that won bronze at the 2020 Games. 'Going into Tokyo the medal was the dream, but I probably didn't really believe it until it happened, whereas going into Paris I fully believed we were capable of doing it.
'It's not even so much about the result itself on paper [they finished eighth], it was the performance I think that really upset us. If we had our best race out there and we came fifth or sixth that probably would have been an easier thing to walk away from.
Aifric Keogh and Fiona Murtagh at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium in Paris during the 2024 Games. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho
'Fiona and I talked about it. We had an amazing season. Every single day was a dream with her. We won three international medals – in every event we entered until that week in Paris. We just happened to have our worst possible days on the most important ones. It's a very difficult pill to swallow. Still is. It probably always will be.'
Supports have been designed for any number of outcomes because exits from the Games can be steep. Not everyone holds their footing.
Dr Karen Howells, an academic and sports psychologist, told the New York Times after last year's Games that she had 'not yet met an Olympian who hasn't experienced' what is often called the post-Olympic blues.
Rhasidat Adeleke after the women's 400m Olympic final. Lately she has laboured under a run of dull form. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
After the Tokyo Games a study of 49 Danish Olympians and Paralympians showed that 27 per cent of them reported 'below average wellbeing or moderate to severe depression.' What seemed like a counter-intuitive finding, though, was that 40 per cent of athletes who had achieved their goals still reported 'below average wellbeing' when the Games were over. Either way, the Olympics had left a mark.
In the Institute of Sport a number of off-ramps and guard rails have been put in place. As soon as the Olympics finished all the athletes were contacted by a transition psychologist for an initial debrief, followed six weeks later by deeper exploration of their experience.
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'They would have been contacted within days of their event,' says Rheinisch. 'A separate transition psychologist has been brought on staff to manage that process. There is also a very clear process between our team [Life Performance Skills] and the psychology team, so there were multiple checkpoints.
'When the dust settles, they're contacted again to do a more formal debrief and a bit more unpacking of the experience. It's not about the result, it's more about, 'What was it like for you? What's going through your head now? Where to next?'
'At that point, if someone is struggling, they can get clinical psychology support from the team – if needed. There are quite a few safety nets in place. But it does still require the athlete to engage with that. They can still say, 'I don't want to take the call,' or 'I'm not affected'.'
For some athletes, it was the end of the road. By the close of last year 23 athletes had retired from the carding system – the means by which Sport Ireland funds elite athletes. Not all those athletes had made it to the Olympics or the Paralympics, but the churn in the system was much greater than usual. Among the high-profile athletes, Harrington retired and so too did Thomas Barr, Ellen Keane and Eve McCrystal.
Thomas Barr in the 2024 Olympics 4x400m mixed relay heats in the Stade de France. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho
For everyone there is a parachute system in place. Each athlete's funding for Olympic year would have continued until the end of 2024, but for this year they would have been given 50 per cent of last year's grant while they found their feet. They also had continued access to the athlete support services at the Institute for the first six months of this year.
After the Paris Games, at 32 years of age, Keogh was another of the athletes who stepped away. She had toyed with the idea after Tokyo but this time there were no doubts or second thoughts. The future was blurry.
'I always thought I did a good job of keeping up some sort of study, keeping up some bit of work while I was training – on and off, depending on the demands of the year,' says Keogh. 'But at the same time, if someone asked me [after the Olympics], 'Well, what do you want to do now?' I still didn't have the answer. It was a blank page.
'I felt like I was doing everything right [while a full-time athlete] but I didn't know exactly where I wanted to go. I still don't really, to be honest. I had those six weeks post-Games to maybe shut off and rest and then kind of say, 'Okay, stick your head out of the sand. What are you going to do now? Open the laptop and figure out your life.'
Last November the Institute of Sport organised a gathering of 40 'athlete friendly employers' as an opportunity for networking. Keogh knocked on one of their doors and it opened.
'The life skills department put me in touch with my current employers so I'm on an athlete transition programme with JP Morgan. They open the door to athletes on the basis that we have all these transferable skills and they give us a chance to find our feet within the world.
Swimmers Mona McSharry, with her bronze, and Daniel Wiffen, with his gold and bronze medals, last August. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
'It took a while, and it is still taking a while to get used to the different life. Rowing is crazy. It's only when I left the bubble that I realised how insane it all is – dedicating every moment of every day of every week to it.'
Many others returned to the arena, though, some of them slowly. The first year of a new Olympic cycle is not straightforward. Stuff happens too. Rhys McClenaghan had surgery on his shoulder. Daniel had appendicitis.
After a long road-trip around the United States in a camper van with her best friend, Mona McSharry didn't return to the pool until New Year's Eve. For the World Championships in Singapore this week she reckons she was about '90 per cent' fit. That left her short.
Wiffen felt 'weak' and surrendered both of his world titles. On Thursday he pulled out of his remaining events. Not himself. Not the ball of fire he was in Paris.
Rhasidat Adeleke has laboured under a run of dull form. She pulled out of the National Championships this week and was a late withdrawal from the Diamond League meeting in Monaco last month. In three 400m races at Diamond League events this season she has failed to break 50 seconds.
'Just making sure I can stay healthy and stay motivated and disciplined and stay on the road to Tokyo [World Championships in September],' she said in London last month. Did she worry about motivation and discipline last season? Different year.
Kate O'Connor in the heptathlon high jump in last year's Olympics. This year she has won medals at two major championships. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
Everyone is trying to turn the page. Boxing has appointed a new high performance director; rowing is still looking for one.
Paul O'Donovan was slow returning to water and by the time he did Fintan McCarthy had a different partner for the European Championships – where he won bronze alongside Konan Pazzaia. With the lightweight programme scrapped for LA, McCarthy and O'Donovan must compete as heavyweights now. Trials for the World Championships were held on Inniscarra Lake this week. In the new Olympic cycle, it feels like the end of the beginning for them.
Others have flourished this year. Kate O'Connor has already won medals at two major championships and so has Nicola Tuthill. Lara Gillespie made a brilliant start to her first appearance in the Tour de France. Eve McMahon has climbed to number one in the world rankings in her sailing class. For all of them Paris was their first Games. In kicking on, they have wasted no time.
Liam Jegou returned to competition in March. In Paris, his story was heartbreaking. In the final of the canoe slalom, he brushed against the last gate and the penalty he incurred dropped him from the silver medal position to 7th. He couldn't just walk away from Paris and shut the door behind him.
Liam Jegou reacts after being ruled out of medal contention in the men's canoe slalom final in last year's Olympics. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
'It's a weird one to think back on,' he says now, 'because on the one hand it's a great memory, making the final at the Olympics and coming so close to a medal. But it also stings – even with time. I think it was more in the winter that it started to sink in a bit more. Even towards the first races of the season, when you're back struggling again, you look back on how big a moment that was. It's a hard one to describe. It's been up and down.
'I had a hard time with the first couple of races of the season. Maybe that's why [the hangover from Paris]. It's hard to know. I didn't train less but it didn't work out as well. I don't know how to say it – I had less oomph.'
Jegou's sights are set on LA. Not everybody will have that opportunity. A few months ago, the IRFU scrapped its men's sevens programme. Keogh had barely taken over as chair of the Athletes Commission when the news broke.
'That was quite stressful,' says Keogh. 'It was shocking. It's one thing when the IOC [International Olympic Committee] is not hosting your sport with a Games, but when it's your own federation making that call, that can be a tough pill to swallow. You talk to the players and make sure that transition is supported as well as possible, but you never want that to happen again to any other sport.'
The LA Games are only 1,077 days away. A clock somewhere is ticking.