CONFIDENT NOT COCKY
Gold medal gymnast Mcclenaghan gives an insight into thinking of new Irish Games stars
RHYS MCCLENAGHAN doesn’t know any other way.
Standing in the shade at the Place du Trocadero, moments after participating in the Walk of Champions parade, he had that Olympic gold medal around neck for company as well as 15,000 applauding fans.
Mcclenaghan is part of a wave of successful new Olympians who are different, unabashed in their belief that they can perform on the greatest stage – and have no problem telling the world that.
“Of course I’m not shying away from what my goals were,” the man from Newtownards, Co Down, stated. “I said I wanted to be the best in the world, to become an Olympic champion.”
A record flurry of medals for Team Ireland has captured the imagination of those roaring them on in Paris and back home.
But so did the straight-talking, can-do attitude of this new generation of Olympians. They took over the Games in their own way and helped to raise Ireland to a record high. The older guard had their own ways of getting it done. Paul O’donovan tried to pull the underdogs card but just got everyone laughing at the idea of it as he became Ireland’s greatest ever Olympian.
Five days later, The Kellie Harrington Show had a happyever-after ending as she expressed the desire just to finish her career on a high.
For Ireland’s first-time gold medal winners, however, success had been planned out over a long period of time.
Mcclenaghan and fellow Ulsterman Daniel
Wiffen (right) often spoke during this Olympic cycle about the sky-high ambitions they had.
For Mcclenaghan, who won pommel horse gold last Saturday, there was actually no other option but to say out loud what he intended to achieve.
The 25-year-old said: “Obviously I’m standing here with a medal and saying that but back then I was perplexed when people said, ‘Oh, you’re actually saying your goals’. Hell yeah I’m saying my goals. I’m making them as clear as possible so that if something goes wrong and is veering off the pathway of achieving that goal, I know exactly, ‘OK, this is not in line with this goal here’.
“I say openly what I want to achieve, I aim for it and it doesn’t go swimmingly smooth. Obviously Tokyo was an example. But we can veer back onto that course and continue to aim for that goal.”
Wiffen is similar. So, too, Rhasidat Adeleke who declared after winning her 400m heat on Monday that she was here to do something special. Mcclenaghan puts this tell-itlike-it-is approach down to having watched loads of top athletes give interviews and gaining an understanding of what makes them tick.
“I pick and choose from other athletes, not how they speak or present themselves, but how their mind works, it’s what you see almost behind their eyes that is interesting to me,” he explained.