IRELAND’S ATHLETES HAVE had a banner time at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris so far. Some back home, however, have put in a less-than-sterling performance.

Catherine Martin on Thursday furthered the legacy of sports ministers’ tweeting encouragement to Irish athletes hours after they’d just lost in the Olympics. Unfortunately for Martin, this happened not once, but twice. 

First, a tweet went out to boxer Jack Marley which included the sentiment: “There was no stopping you,” alongside a boxing glove emoji. The second tweet commended Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove on a bronze they did not win, and carried the message: “They showed outstanding strength and stamina throughout the week.”

The gaffe will remind sports fans of the time previous Shane Ross, then-Minister for Sport, tweeted “Here in Rio. Honoured to be cheering as Katie enters the ring” and “Go Katie go!” five hours after Taylor had lost her bout with Mira Potkonen of Finland. 

Of course, anyone who works in digital media will instantly recognise this as an error in scheduling pre-written tweets. Whether that excuses such a major lapse during such a major event, however, is another matter (it doesn’t). While it’s unlikely that any of Ireland’s athletes are religiously checking for Martin’s social media output, the problem here is not simply that Martin or her staff forgot to remove a scheduled tweet. It’s that the tweets were designed to give the impression that Martin had actually been paying attention – something which could now be called into question.

It’s hardly realistic to think that a government minister should be sat on the couch like the rest of us watching every single Olympic event (despite our success, surely we can all agree that the Olympics has far too much swimming), but it’s sense of artifice that will rub people the wrong way. Both tweets were deleted without acknowledgment.

It’s been quite a week for regrettable statements made about the Olympics.

A considerable amount of misinformation pertaining to the gender of two female boxers – Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting – has proliferated online, aided by the likes of JD Vance, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and (of course) JK Rowling. A breakdown of the facts can be found here.

Khelif has come in for some particularly horrid attention after defeating her opponent Angela Carini, with Carini forfeiting the fight after 46 seconds. Based on a heavily disputed ruling by the International Boxing Association last year. The IBA ruling was based on a test the details of which have not been disclosed, and the IBA was last year stripped of its status as a global governing body for boxing due to failures in ethics, corporate governance and finance.

Khelif was born a female, registered as a female on her birth cert, discouraged from boxing by her father because she was a woman, and remains female on her passport issued by Algeria, a country where it is illegal to be gay or trans. Some online have shared photos from her childhood to illustrate that Khelif is and has always been female.

Many high-profile commentators, including some Irish journalists, failed to cover themselves in glory when giving their ill-informed opinions on the matter. Former RTÉ correspondent David Davin-Power, for example, asked: “How would we feel if Kellie Harrington was put in this position?” Harrington, of course, fought and beat Khelif at the last Olympics. She was also beaten by Irish boxer Amy Broadhurst in 2022. Broadhurst has spoken out on Twitter in defence of Khelif.

In Khelif’s career, she has been beaten by her fellow women a total of nine times. For some reason, none of those results were met with the same global outcry.

Davin-Power bowed out of the conversation by saying: “It seems I have stumbled into another controversy in which only ideologues are allowed comment. Goodbye.” One tends to stumble into controversy when one has no idea what one is talking about. It was a weird non-acknowledgment that he was, quite simply, in the wrong.

This misplaced outrage followed a similar puritanical panic in the wake of the games’ opening ceremony, in which trans and non-binary people were perceived to be depicted in the style of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper. Oddly enough, far less has been said about Dutch beach volleyball competitor Steven van de Velde, who was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl in 2016. Once again there seems to be a distinction between the obsessive hordes online and the normal people in the real world, as van de Velde was roundly booed by the crowd while plying his trade beneath the Eiffel Tower.

Tellingly, Khelif’s defeated opponent Angela Carini, has apologised for the firestorm that Khelif is now facing, saying: “All this controversy makes me sad. I’m sorry for my opponent, too. If the IOC said she can fight, I respect that decision.” Carini added that if she met Khelif again she would “embrace her”.

What has amounted to no less than a worldwide bullying campaign has undeniably detracted attention from a phenomenal week for Irish athletes. There have been gold medals for Fintan McCarthy and Paul O’Donovan, repeating the feat of three years ago. Kellie Harrington is assured of at least a bronze in the boxing. Mona McSharry took bronze in swimming, and there was a bronze for another rowing duo of Phillip Doyle and Daire Lynch. Elsewhere, several boxers were hard done by extremely dubious boxing decisions, hearkening back to Michael Conlon’s defeat in Rio eight years ago.

There is also – of course – the historic gold medal won by Armagh man Daniel Wiffen. Naturally, the victory of an Armagh man wearing the Irish flag, so hot on the heels of Armagh’s All Ireland Football Final win six days ago, has caused some to lose their minds twice in the space of a week.

At least in Wiffen’s case the police weren’t dragged into it. Following Armagh’s win last Sunday, a PSNI officer faced full-throated condemnation by the leaders of the DUP and UUP for having the temerity to fly his county’s flag out the window of his car. One wonders whether there is nothing more pressing for these politicians to concern themselves with, but after an entire day spent debating the gender of a woman who has been a competitive boxer for over six years, one also wonders whether there is anything that can be done to bring certain sections of the global population back to the real world.

So that’s enough of that for now.

With Rhys McClenaghan in a great position to win gold on the pommel and Rhasidat Adeleke still to run, there remains the chance that Ireland will exceed its record medal haul achieved in London 12 years ago.

And even if we don’t, we can just read Catherine Martin’s Twitter and tell ourselves that we did.