By John Spain 

THE last few days of the Olympics turned out to be a rollercoaster ride for us here. After two weeks of deep disappointment as one dismal Irish performance followed another in failure, our brilliant young showjump rider Cian O’Connor triumphed at the end of the Games and took gold for Ireland. 

And then that mad priest from Kerry, dressed like a leprechaun in our national colors, embarrassed the entire country in front of the whole world when he jumped on the unfortunate Brazilian who was leading the marathon. Apart from being a tragedy for the runner involved, it was an incident so cringe-making for anyone Irish that it had everyone here curling up in embarrassment. 

It fulfilled every stereotype we hate, a mad Irish priest in his green, white and orange outfit, complete with kilt and funny hat. This grotesque incident was carried live on TV around the world, watched by hundreds of millions of people. 

The international press the next day — including papers from South America to Canada, from Asia to Europe — were full of it. And they all carried the picture of this lunatic, bedecked in his Irish colors. 

The subtext in the captions and reports was that, begorrah, he’s Oirish, so no further explanation is necessary. Of course he’s as mad as a brush, but aren’t they all like that over there? 

No doubt people in Britain and the U.S. know us well enough to realize that this idiot is just that, a deranged simpleton whose nationality is of no relevance. But this appalling image reached right around the globe into remote countries who know little about us beyond the national stereotype of a mad, priest-ridden, drink-fueled, rebellious people, prone to all kinds of crazy behavior, a stereotype that has now been powerfully reinforced. 

You can dismiss this as just a few unfortunate moments of acute embarrassment for Irish people everywhere. But it is much more damaging than that. And the annoying thing is that it should never have happened. 

This lunatic has a track record, if you will pardon the pun. He has already pulled a similar stunt at a Grand Prix motor race in Britain where he is based. He was temporarily locked up for that and then released. And the odds had to be that he would try to do it again. 

Knowing this, the Irish passport he travels on should have been cancelled. And both the Irish government and the Catholic Church should have been monitoring his travel plans. 

It’s too late now. But we will need to know where this clown is in future when major sporting events are coming up. Freed by the Greeks because of his mental state, he is now back in the Nunhead (don’t laugh!) area in London where he lives. 

The Liveline phone-in show on Irish radio have him on as I write this on Tuesday, and he said that people may laugh at him but they laughed at Christ as well. He also said that he is getting the best psychiatric treatment and is on special drugs. Clearly they’re not working. 

Meanwhile, the church is trying to ignore him. And the authorities here say there is little they can do. But someone better start taking responsibility for him soon. 

Apart from that embarrassment, we are all basking in the Cian O’Connor triumph, although it does not hide the fact that this was one of the worst Irish performances ever at an Olympics. What went wrong with the 50-strong Irish team is now the subject of a national debate here. 

No one is blaming individuals. One athlete pointed out that he had bee living on Œ200 a week for the past year as he prepared for the Games, and for that money he was not going to take the level of criticism that soccer players earning millions got. 

There can be no doubt that each member of the Irish Olympics team did their very best. The Olympics is, after all, the pinnacle of their careers. There is no reason for them to hold anything back, and there is no suggestion that any of them did.

Yet it has to be said that the performance of the Irish team was extremely disappointing. The individual athletes may have done their best on the day, but the fact is that in many cases this did not even measure up to their own personal best performances.

Clearly something is wrong. We had been told in recent months that this was the best prepared team we have ever sent to an Olympics. 

Yet there is a question mark over how prepared some team members were for the entirely predictable level of heat they faced in Greece, among other predictable factors. 

An official investigation is now to be held into the team’s preparation, which in this country is entirely predictable. (If gold medals were given for inquiries, Ireland would top the table.) 

Equally predictable were the views being expressed by the Big Three of Irish sport, Minister for Sport John O’Donoghue, Olympic Council of Ireland President Pat Hickey and Irish Sports Council Chief Executive and former runner John Treacy. They say the structures are now in place and the money is being spent on sport, but they need more time and we need to be more patient. 

It is true that it’s just seven years since sport got its own (shared) government department here and a minister at the Cabinet table. In that time spending on sport in Ireland has increased almost seven fold to well over Œ100 million a year. 

And it is true that the organization of sport is improving, as is the support for our best young athletes. But it is also true that we have a long way to go. 

The grants that our athletes get are small by international standards. They allow the athletes to train full time in the run-up to the Games. But they don’t make up for our lack of facilities. 

We also have some very fundamental issues to face if we are serious about winning medals in the future. For example, much of the money we spend on sports facilities now is being poured into football, Gaelic, soccer and rugby. In comparison, we spend very little on so-called minority sports like track and field or swimming. 

How many schools in Ireland have an athletics track? How many towns have one? How many have facilities for the long jump? How many cities have a 50 meter pool? 

The answer is that apart from in private fee-paying schools, almost no facilities of this kind exist across the country. There are only two 50 meter pools in Ireland, one in Dublin and one in Limerick (and both are shallow to save on the heating bills!) 

There is also the fundamental issue of our national fitness. As the minister has put it, too many of our children are more into Playstations than playing fields. 

And parents contribute to the problem. Not many children in Ethiopia are driven to school, which is one reason why they produce such remarkable runners. 

The unpleasant fact is that Ireland is becoming a nation of couch potatoes, with around 8% of Irish schoolkids now clinically obese and more than a quarter overweight.

If we are serious about winning medals at future Olympics we need to start in the schools, and we need facilities for a much wider range of sports. It has also been suggested that Irish universities should set up American-style scholarship programs for athletes, which is a good idea, although the lack of facilities is still a problem even in universities. 

Take away money worries and provide the right facilities and Irish athletes can be as good as anyone, as names like Delaney, Coughlan, Treacy and O’Sullivan have shown. But the roots of the problem here are very deep. 

We are still a nation of happy amateurs, when everyone else is becoming more professional. Cian O’Connor is a shining example of what can be achieved, when enough support is provided to someone with exceptional talent and drive.

It’s no accident that O’Connor won a gold. He happens to be the grandson of Dr. Karl Mullen, one of the great figures of Irish rugby and a personal friend of Tony O’Reilly, head of Independent newspapers, Waterford Glass and much more. 

Obsessed with horses and an Olympic dream, young O’Connor asked O’Reilly for help, and the result was that his horse and his expenses over the past few years have been sponsored (the horse is called Waterford Glass). 

Cian is already trying to find a suitable young horse for the Olympics in Beijing four years from now. That’s how long the preparation has to be and how long a sponsor has to be prepared to dig deep into his pockets. 

The Olympic Council of Ireland and the Sports Council of Ireland need to change a great deal as well if we are to succeed in future. We have to bring in more professional systems, we have to invest much more and we have to start younger. Professional coaches should be brought in for primary school kids to identify and nurture the young stars of the future. 

For me the defining image of these Games will be Sonia O’Sullivan’s farewell. Courage, they say, is the ability to show grace under pressure. And certainly that was what Sonia showed in her Olympic swan song. 

As she trailed last, she could have stopped and no one would have blamed her. Instead she battled on through the final laps and even managed a smile for the Irish supporters. 

When it was over, there were the inevitable tears. Age had finally caught her, rather than the runners who lapped her. 

But she has nothing to feel badly about. She behaved like the true champion she is.