Have you ever seen our Tricolour go up and down so many poles? It’s not that we haven’t enjoyed athletics and swimming success before, we certainly have, but that was a week like few – if any – others.
So much so, we were left facing the prospect of a severe traffic jam of open-top buses once our bling-laden crew arrived home from Birmingham and Paris.
It was all a bit on the magical side. Even Kate O’Connor’s gold was agreeable. We say “even” here because many of us still harbour resentments over the girls in school who were good at every sport when we’d have settled for being marginally useful at one.
“Looking at her there on the track: she’s like Wonder Woman, she’s like the perfect human,” as Rob Heffernan put it after O’Connor wrapped up her heptathlon triumph in that 800m.
This, incidentally, is where we risk antagonising those willing to be incarcerated rather than pay their TV licence fee and the inbox being stuffed with three abusive emails, but: RTÉ deserve a nod. There, said it.
Not least presenter Paul O’Flynn who had to seamlessly hop from the swimming to the athletics and back again and never once was discombobulated enough to tell us “Ellen Walshe and Mark English are up next for Ireland in the pole vault” or ask Derval O’Rourke if she preferred the backstroke or butterfly back in the day.
And Greg Allen and David Gillick could probably tell you the inside leg measurements of the Montenegrin high jumper’s plumber’s postman, the pair leaving you so informed you could actually hear yourself hollering at the television during the shot put: “For God’s sake, Kate, tidy up your twisting torque.”
Andrew Coscoran celebrates winning bronze on Saturday in the men’s 1,500m final at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/INPHO
And Gillick remains the warmest of interviewers. It’s unlikely we’ll ever hear him say to an Irish athlete: “I’ve seen more pace from a sloth – might it be time to retire?”, but that’s okay. Sonia O’Sullivan might, though. “That’s what happens when you take the superstars out,” she said of Andrew Coscoran winning bronze in the 1,500m. Rob was aghast. “There were enough stars in it.” Delicious.
Inevitably, communications are incoming – and in block capital letters with excessive punctuation – along the lines of: “What about the RTÉ commentators awarding a swimming bronze in a semi-final and not spotting an Irish bronze in the athletics?”
These things did indeed happen, but, come ’ere, if you want to fixate on brain-freeze nano-seconds rather than hours of excellence then fill yer boots.
Nick O’Hare, meanwhile, came to the swimming armed with a crystal ball. “I think Ellen’s going to get a medal here,” he said before Walshe took on the 200m individual medley. “Don’t get panicked if she is behind after 100m.”
Ellen Walshe in the women’s 200m butterfly semi-final at the European Aquatics Championships in Paris on Saturday. Photograph: Giorgio Scala/INPHO
Seventh after 50m. Panic. Sixth after 100m. Ooh. Fourth after 150m. Hello? First after 200m. Oh, Lord. Gold number two, there won’t be a cow milked in Templeogue, Dublin, until January. “I don’t even know. I’m just so shocked,” Walshe told RTÉ, which was nothing to the state of stupefaction the audience had been left in by this torrent of medals.
And Coscoran gave us another in that 1,500m. We removed our gaze from the fella in the closing stages to focus on the medal contenders, concluding that a top-eight finish for the boy from Balbriggan, Co Dublin, wasn’t bad going at all. Then? Not since Roy Keane flattened Alf-Inge Haaland almost 30 years ago have we seen an Irish kick quite like it.
“Ah man, some craic,” he said to Gillick, the smiley head on him resulting in this house being left without a dry eye. Few in Irish sport have worked harder for their day in the sun.
Sunday, and by 5.40pm we still hadn’t won another medal, so we were reaching national emergency levels. But then along came Mona McSharry to win her third, meaning her excess luggage charges could be crippling on the way home. “A tsunami of success,” Andrew Bree said of our swimming haul. The same, of course, could be applied to our athletics gang.
Yep, a week like few others. Ah man, some craic.