Egan shines so brightly amid Irish 'flap and fuss'
American swimmer and Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps greets the crowd during a Olympics handover party outside Buckingham Palace in central London yesterday.
In time, Beijing will recede to memory, sluicing its traffic back onto gasping streets, re-opening its power-plants, restoring the air to a heavy, brown soup.
And Kenny Egan will face into a different life, better in parts, worse in others.
His story won't be told by the colour of his medal or the octaves in our outrage. It will be expressed in that gentle, loping carriage, the honest eyes, the wry, Neilstown drawl.
He is another hero from an ordinary Dublin suburb and a run-down boxing hall. Actually, not even a boxing hall. Neilstown still train out of the local school. They make do. If improvisation was an Olympic sport, we'd be China now.
But then, if golds were offered for petulant administration the rest of the world would demand a handicapping system to contain us.
You will see a lot of people scattering waves like hyper cheerleaders this week. People standing next to Egan, Darren Sutherland and Paddy Barnes like they're bringing home a few prize hogs from the fair. To them, glory is some kind of odd little sinecure. A dowry that comes with the blazer.
The trouble with an Irish Olympic team is that, for some, it's a package holiday. The jobs they do are mysterious. They wear accreditation badges like epaulettes and sink into the Olympic experience like it's a big, fat duvet.
Plenty of people could have solved the Gary Keegan mess, but didn't. Plenty of people who spent the fortnight clenching fists and shooting high fives in the Workers' Gymnasium just played blind to the elephant in the corner.
Pat Hickey peels any argument against the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI) like it's the pith of an orange.
Hickey is technically correct when he tosses the Keegan story back at us as an internal boxing war. It was the Irish Amateur Boxing Association's (IABA) call to name a manager for the team and they did that. Shamefully, they overlooked the logical candidate.
In an ideal world, the OCI's right of veto would have kicked in there and then.
The boxers achieved what they did in Beijing, essentially, because Keegan set a template of discipline never seen before.
People like Egan grew up with the old ways. He was once suspended for drinking at a training camp in Bulgaria. The old ways caricatured Ireland and Irish fighters. Hard men cutting corners.
It was Keegan who changed that. Five years ago, he brought them in after a camp in France, drew a line on the floor, and invited the boxers to step one side of it if they wanted to live their lives as world-class athletes live.
Some moved, some didn't. Kenny Egan moved.
If the business of the IABA was too trussed up in small-town spite to give Keegan his due, it was the OCI's responsibility to call them to order. That they didn't, tells you all you need to know about the business of an Irish Olympics.
So, the bulk of our track athletes fussed and flapped like hens in a busy farmyard here, the trite occurrence of personal bests just never arising. The much-touted (and funded) lightweight rowers could have been gold medalists in the team head cold final for all we noticed.
On the few days of sunshine we got in Beijing, Irish competitors blanched as if being burned on a skillet.
There were, of course, exceptions like Eoin Rheinisch, Paul Hession, Olive Loughnane and, whisper it, the swimmers. But, too many came here as timid guests. Too many others as tourists.
So, the funding parties will have their delinquent fun now. Yesterday, it was rumoured that the OCI had landed the first blow with a declaration not to co-operate with the Sports Council in any review of Beijing '08. The Beavis and Butthead factor again.
No matter, this is Egan's time. There will be days ahead when he pines for his old life, when he looks around him and sees too many unfamiliar faces. Days when he senses nothing but clawing hands in a room. Celebrity in a small place may open doors, but it closes off little freedoms too.
Egan has everything to be an Irish superstar. His trademark is a wonderful smile that reaches into his eyes. He is good with people. After Friday's semi-final, the perspiration on his shoulders had become air-conditioned sticky by the time the media were through.
As he headed for the showers, Egan was called back by a local reporter. The reporter wanted his views on the growth of Chinese boxing.
And the essential decency in Egan compelled him to give a decent answer. He stopped and spoke of Eastern bloc coaching influences, of how China's revolution had been brewing in the lighter divisions, but how he had noticed that, now, even the bigger men were technically sound. "Even our lad, the light-heavyweight is doing brilliant," said Egan of his final opponent.
He talked of children and the need for early intervention coaching. He de-bunked the idea of any mysteries in training. For maybe three minutes, Egan gave someone time that he didn't have to give.
When he was finished, the young reporter thanked him with a subservient bow. And Egan thanked him back.
For those of us accustomed to the de-lousing chambers of Croke Park in the pursuit of a quotable line, his sang-froid of these past days has been a gentle revelation.
We've needed 3D glasses for some of what we've seen in China. For Kenny Egan, we just needed shades.
- Vincent Hogan
