Sticking his oar in

What follows is the first article of mine that appeared after I got back from Australia. What was meant to be a light Q&A with rower Gearoid Towey ended up a hard news piece on the front page.

Gearoid wasn’t all that amused, as the splash was a bit unexpected, and had the potential to put him in the crosshairs of his bosses in the various echelons of Ireland’s sporting administration.

Click below to read the story in the TCM Archives, or simply turn below the fold.

“Irish Rower supports boycott of Opening Ceremony” (April 13, 2008.)

Irish Olympic rower Gearóid Towey has broken ranks with the Irish squad and said he would support a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Towey, who has represented Ireland in two previous Olympics, said boycotting the ceremony was ‘‘the way to go’’ for athletes who felt strongly about China’s presence in Tibet or its human rights record.

‘‘I’m totally against what the Chinese are doing in Tibet, and I think the Olympics is a good opportunity for athletes to highlight the problem,” he said. ‘‘I think boycotting the opening ceremony is the way to go – that would be a way for the athletes to make a statement, but still get to compete, because they have put their whole lives into it.” Amid worldwide anti-China protests last week, Pat Hickey, president of the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI), said there was ‘‘no question’’ of a boycott by Irish athletes.

However, Corkman Towey said agreements signed by the athletes with the OCI did not prevent them making their own decision on whether to attend the opening ceremony.

‘‘There’s no stipulation [that we] turn up to the opening ceremony,” he said. ‘‘That kind of thing would have to come from the athletes. If the athlete body at the Olympics wants to make a stand, that would be the perfect way to do it.”