Olympic Spillage #15: The worst dive ever and can we send John Mullane to Rio?

The worst diver since Didier Drogba, why John Mullane should be in the next Olympics and drug testers make one Irish athlete happy.

The worst dive at London 2012

Diving is really hard so it is kind of comforting to see someone screw it up at the Olympics. Makes them seem a bit more human. We’re sure that is no consolation to German diver Stephan Feck this morning as he becomes more famous than any of the gold medal winners for this effort.

Looks painful too...

Why we should send John Mullane to the Olympics...

Last night the men’s 400m title went to Kirani James. The 19-year-old ran under 44 seconds, a real sign of class and it looks like he will one day be the man to take Michael Johnson’s long-standing record in the event.

James hails from Grenada, a tiny island Caribbean island with a population of just 109,000, making it the smallest country to ever win an Olympic gold medal.

Just to check, we had a look to see what Irish county was nearest in size to Greneda, to see if we could find our own Kirani James. Just below Grenada in population numbers is Kilkenny, with a population just over 95,000 in last year’s Census. We reckon if Brian Cody gave a few of the lads four years off from winning All-Ireland’s one of them could do the business in Rio.

But the nearest in population numbers is Waterford, with just over 113,000 souls in the county. There is only one sport we can see for them; send John Mullane to the fencing. The helmets being ripped off, the wild celebration of each point, the speed and skill. The De La Salle man is a cert for fencing gold. Lets make it happen.

One Irish athlete is very happy about the drug testers...

Yesterday brought two drug stories. One was the American judoka who accidentally ate some food laced with marijuana, the other was a bit more serious. Italian race walker Alex Schwazer, winner of the 50km gold in Beijing, was withdrawn by his country yesterday after it was confirmed he had failed a drug test.

It is unknown as yet what he was taking but one of his rivals for the Olympic title, Irish walker Robert Heffernan, was delighted to see another cheat out of his sport.

Well said Robert.