OLYMPICS/Interview with Stephen Martin: Keith Duggan talks to the first chief executive of the OCI, a gold medal winner in Seoul with the Great Britain hockey team, who is expected to deliver Ireland some elusive Olympic metal
The wintry majesty of Howth in January seems like an unlikely place for the next crop of Ireland's Olympic dreamers to gather. But this weekend at Olympic House, the impressive former coast guard's dwelling now transformed into the nerve centre of the Olympic Committee of Ireland, coaches and athletes will gather to talk about Beijing in 2008.
Stand long enough staring into the raw beauty and twinkling opulence of Howth Head and visions of the Chinese Olympics will appear on the horizon. In terms of Olympiads, Beijing is just around the corner. That is why Stephen Martin, the first chief executive of the OCI, concentrates most of his considerable passion on the promise of the London Games of 2012.
"We are already down to five years in terms of preparation," he marvels. " The Olympic Games should be the pinnacle of any athlete's career. They are not part of a development. So to go there, you should be going to really compete, not just to be there.
"That said, there are some exceptions. Boxing, for example, where the European standard is terrifically high and just qualifying for the Games can be a feat. But in the main, we want our athletes to be consistently making semi-finals or finals.
"If you were an investor, would you want your product just being there without making any impact? There has to be performance. And already, the conversations I have had with the Taoiseach and the sports minister (John O'Donoghue) would suggest that the Government is thinking in the same way. 2012 is a real opportunity.
"It is a home Games for Britain but in a way, it is like a home Games for Ireland too because interest and accessibility will never be higher."
Athletes think in this way, carving out great blocks of time, half-decades in this instance, in which to prepare for the two-week wonder of the Olympic Games.
A gold Olympic medal winner with Great Britain in the 1988 Games at Seoul, the spirit of that driven and talented hockey player remains locked into Martin's personality, but patience and planning and vision are critical to what he hopes Ireland can achieve at future Olympics.
AFTER SEVEN YEARS OF travelling from his home in Hollywood, Co Down to work with the British Olympic Institute, he was happy to transfer his allegiance to home shores.
The success of the London Olympic bid has meant the years ahead were certain to become even more hectic and he believes he sees in Ireland's cause some shadow of where Britain's Olympic state was when he first began working in London.
He arrived in Howth just this week and while proudly escorting me around the impressive OCI headquarters, he apologised for the boxes stacked in his office.
A self-declared disciplinarian and workaholic, he glanced out at the bracing coastal roads of Howth and the surf-splashed pier and murmured, "this place is great. Perfect for keeping a wee bit fit as well".
Martin faces a challenge that is, on the face of it, unenviable. Ireland departed the broiling games of Athens with just a single medal (Cian O'Connor's controversial equestrian gold) and there was a generally pessimistic outlook on the future of Irish track and field.
Martin was immersed in Britain's team effort in Athens so tales of Irish heartbreak understandably mean nothing to him right now. In the coming months, he expects to be able to rhyme off what each Irish athlete eats for his breakfast, but in his first days in the job he can only outline his vision and constantly apologised for referring to the BOI template.
"There was a lot of money flying around when I came in seven years ago. And a lot of agencies around. For example, in athletics, they had 100 athletes in high-performance programmes and then a tier for world-class potential just beneath that.
"But there were probably only 40 athletes of world-class standard and we were sort of questioning if we had the athletes to cover all the various disciplines. Like when Backley (Steve, javelin bronze 1992, silver 1996, 2000) goes, there would be nobody else there. Track and field, we had a few distance runners, sprints we were good at, hurdlers . . . ish. So in short, there was a lot of money around and it was given out too easily.
"Now the focus is: fewer athletes, harder to get in, better support for those athletes. And in the sports which we are strong in, a steady stream of consistent talent coming through and working in tandem with the BOI. It seems to me that Ireland is ready for that change now. My impression is that this country is very passionate about sport but we have been starved of success. Even beyond the Olympics, we haven't had much to shout about. But there is potential.
"For example, we are traditionally strong at rowing. But in Britain, the coach Jurgen Grobler had maybe 12 rowers from which to fill a boat of four. Here, one injury can scupper the medal chances of a fours team. We need more depth."
Martin accepts that while the theory sounds fine, the actuality can be muddy. Olympic athletes are, for the most part, solitary and reclusive creatures.
Every four summers, Ireland cares deeply about track and field and other sports, moans about the medal count and then forgets. But his basic plan is simple. Identify the athletes. Bring in world class coaches to work with them. Develop constant three-way communication between the sport, the OCI and the Sports Council. And make sure the funding is there to back the athletes.
"And that's a matter of approaching the Government and saying: 'Bertie, this is what we need'. That is exactly the approach taken in London. Gordon Brown is under pressure to produce twice as much money this time around.
"We estimated the cost of covering athletes on the so-called Podium Programme and those with world-class potential and the Institute at around £100 million, which is peanuts in terms of the UK budget. But the same principle applies here. It costs in and around £50,000-£60,000 per year for the athlete to be in the system. So we got to package stuff around those athletes who are strong at the moment and see how far we can go in Beijing and then talk to the various sports bodies and identify the young athletes, the 16-year-olds who might reach maturation for London."
THE TREND FOR HOST countries to excel during their games (Spain won 22 medals in Barcelona from a previous best total of four) means that Britain have revised their projected medal haul from 25 to 60 with 2012 in mind. But the gold-plated medals plaque in the boardroom of Olympic House is a poignant reminder of how splendid and lonely Ireland's Olympics highlights are.
The idea of Ireland drafting a projected medal count seems somewhat fanciful at the moment. "Yeah, in Ireland, we have to begin by setting more realistic targets," he concedes. "But we have to get athletes over the line more often than the old story of the great white hope that bombed out. We have to create a more competitive team where the Irish are at least chasing medals.
"And closer to the time, we will probably have to set ourselves a medal target. And it is also time to start thinking outside the box. There might be a chink. Forget the summer Games. Like, coming from the outside, the Irish curling team. I think with funding, we could win a medal right there. Or Ireland has a good triathlon tradition. And swimming is considered the main discipline there. Are there any swimmers out there who might work well on a bike and on the road as well?"
"You have to be imaginative and then to execute well. For instance, in the bobsleigh, the UK won a medal in Nagano in 1998. There was funding there but they didn't identify the right athletes to develop the sport.
"They got retired sprinters with limps to push the bloody bob instead of young athletes, maybe a little shy of sprint medal prospects but still very fast and willing to be trained in this new discipline.
"You have to identify the athletes and then have the programme there to deliver them."
LOS ANGELES WAS MARTIN'S first Olympic experience. Like many amateur competitors, he was astounded by the scale and grandiosity of the event, the colour and money. But he was part of an exceptional home countries hockey team that caused a surprise by taking bronze.
The experience was life-changing in terms of his sporting life. He trained three times a day for the next eight years, aerobics in the morning, weights at lunch time. It was a professional regime. In Seoul, 14 of the 1984 team returned and they felt prepared to win gold. The most testing decision was whether or not to attend the opening ceremony as they were due to play South Korea the following morning.
"In the end, we went. But we left it as late as possible, we had food and drink, we sat the entire time and we knew the exits off by heart before we even entered the stadium. We felt that being there would be a motivation. And that was a long time ago.
" Now, you just wouldn't go. But the thing is, the details were taken care of. Those small, messy details become of absolute importance during an Olympics."
And his ambition is that all those creases will be ironed out at future games. There will be no more incidents like Sonia O'Sullivan being forced to change her gear minutes before an Olympic race or athletes in car accidents.
The sensation of the Olympic freeze, when the sheer thrill and terror of finally being at the Games can cause an athlete to stiffen, will be diminished or banished by constant talking with athletes and coaches who have been there before.
"Look, it does happen. I know I went out to play Pakistan in front of 60,000 people and just thought: 'shit!'. But it is not insurmountable. Especially if you know how to deal with it."
AS FOR THE SPECTRE of doping scandals, which have tainted Ireland's recent Olympics, he is hopeful that the philosophy of a centralised Irish programme, with constant monitoring by hand-picked world-class coaches and education will greatly reduce the temptation - or desperation - that draws competitors down that road. If athletes are growing in isolation, if they are off in South America or wherever, then you can see how problems arise. But if they are in a support network, with nutritional advice and a decent coach, the choice becomes clear.
"I remember a nutritionist in Britain listening in amazement to this athlete telling him about the £300 a month he was spending on all these supplements. 'You must have the most expensive piss in the UK' the nutritionist said to him. Because he didn't need half the stuff he was taking.
"In Ireland, I want to see two or three bases where athletes meet and train and have the support locally."
Shiny medals, gold, silver or bronze is what it all comes down to. Underpinning Baron de Coubertin's egalitarian vision is a hard emphasis on metal. Martin keeps his own medal in the playroom his children use rather than stored like a museum piece.
"It's not something we make a big deal of. They know it's this thing dad has won and it's nice but that's about it."
It is the future Irish medals that interest Martin now. He is excited. Working with OCI president Pat Hickey is, he says "just good news. Pat is held in such high regard across international Olympic circles that it is hard to convey just how important he is to the Irish movement".
Many windy nights in Howth lie between them and the hopes of an Irish tricolour rising in deepest China or flying in the summer skies of London. The journey starts now.
