Agonising near misses nothing new even as Ireland reaches greater Olympic heights

The Derry rider was halfway through the course at the Palace of Versailles venue, and in need of a faultless round, when his mare Legacy lost a shoe, he lost the stirrup, and all his hopes and dreams dissipated into the sultry air.

We’ve seen Irish competitors hit the bar in all manner of sports in Paris and at Games through the years but Coyle and Legacy, unbalanced by their timely mishap, crashed through four of them and that was his race run.

Shane Sweetnam was in a similar boat having produced a brilliant performance in qualifying but took on far too much water when picking up 12 faults. Both had done so much right over such a long period of time, but still came up short.

A stirrup here, a shoe there… “And that’s what happened. And he’s not making excuses because that is exactly what happened,” said Bernard Jackman, who is acting high-performance manager for the equestrian team here. “They are the little things that can potentially make a difference.

“If you keep going at it, keep coming here with good horses and good riders, it will fall for us and, to be honest, I am blown away by these show jumpers. They work hard and they know how to prepare well and they also don’t sulk when they don’t win.

“They take it on the chin and they move on. They will be bitterly disappointed because they put everything into this four-year cycle and the Dublin Horse Show is on now in a couple of weeks. There’s no beach. The only week they don’t jump is Christmas week.” 

This is not an Irish thing.

Henrik von Eckermann of Sweden, the world’s No.1, was unhorsed by his mount here. Martin Fuchs of Switzerland was 99.9% of the way around the course when Leone Jei’s hind hoof clipped the last bar. The last bar!

Still, there’s no denying Irish disappointment.

The Irish show jumpers have consistently been a medal fancy pre-Games but Cian O’Connor’s bronze medal in London in 2012 is the only physical return we’ve seen. The team here was one to really watch but came in seventh.

If the seven confirmed Irish medallists to date have hogged the headlines, and understandably so, then there are a wider cohort of their Team Ireland colleagues for whom the next weeks and months will be a daily diet of wistful thinking.

Gavin Noble, the Irish chef de mission here, has said time and again that you need three solid medal chances to come away with one. If anything, Ireland’s conversion rate is far superior to that this last two weeks.

Robert Dickson and Sean Waddlove started their medal race on the waters off Marseille last week in second spot and finished fourth, the worst rung of them all on an Olympic ladder. Rory McIlroy was a shot off the lead when his approach to the 15th green found water.

Liam Jegou made contact with one single pole on a canoe slalom course that chucks man and raft around like a cork in an angry ocean and that was enough to keep him from a podium. The rugby men’s sevens twice let leads slip through their fingers.

“We came strong and put in a first-half performance that we were looking for. We just didn’t back it up,” Hugo Keenan said after they played fast and loose with a lead they had worked so hard to build against Fiji at the Stade de France.

“If it wasn’t for a few mistakes and us not taking a few crucial chances we could have put it to bed. You just can’t make silly mistakes against the top teams. There were probably too many of them. I put my hand up for one or two of them.” 

Keenan is a world-class talent but his mistakes were costly. They all are at this level. McIlroy came away from Le Golf National having finished just outside the medals for the second time and was left to rue an error tiny in execution but enormous in consequences.

“Even that wedge shot on 15 I hit the shot I wanted to hit,” he explained. “The two boys in front of me … they got their balls up in the air a little more and the wind carried it and I saw that they went 25, 30 feet past [the hole].

“I hit the shot I wanted to hit, I just didn't get the ball in the air enough to get the wind to carry it that extra three or four yards I needed to. But I tried to stay aggressive. I tried to land a wedge between the front edge and the hole and missed my spot by three or four yards.” 

That’s just higher than a crossbar in football.

Most athletes will leave Paris nursing regrets or having identified areas in need of improvement. Even gold medallists like Rhys McClenaghan and Daniel Wiffen were picking holes in their performances after hitting the very heights.

These are the laws of averages but Team Ireland is well ahead of itself even with over half a week to go. Rio delivered only two medals but a record number of top tens in 12. Tokyo bumped the medal haul to four and the top tens to 13.

In Paris, those numbers have escalated to seven and 18. And counting.

“We’ve just got to go again,” said Jackman.

Don’t they all?