Holding His Nerve: Greg Allen on the art of calling the Olympic Games
RTE commentator will be on athletics duty Paris Olympics
HOLDING your nerve. That’s what it takes to call the Olympic Games. That and hours of preparation.
Over the next couple of weeks RTE commentator Greg Allen will guide viewers through the track and field action in Paris.
And after becoming a viral star courtesy of the mixed relay 4x400m team gold in Rome, he’s once again hitting the books.
“I’m already doing my prep. I have a study plan, but you will always end up cramming because circumstances change so much during a major championships,” he says.
“It’s just like cramming for your Leaving Cert.”
The great sporting moments are backed by great commentaries — think Jimmy Magee’s words as John Treacy ran to silver at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics or George Hamilton capturing the moment perfectly during Ireland’s Italia ‘90 penalty shoot-out with Romania.
Allen had his own “The nation holds its breath” moment when urging Sharlene Mawdsley to “hold her nerve” in the final strides at the European Athletics Championships last month.
“I got terribly emotionally involved,” says Allen.
“It was the same as when I watched Sonia winning the silver medal in 2000, I wanted to push her across the line for the gold.
“I was almost out of my seat trying to push her along with my words. To be able to call that on radio was an absolute joy.”
Allen’s TV commentary will forever be tied to the mixed relay final in Rome.
One social media clip alone of Chris O’Donnell, Rhasidat Adeleke, Thomas Barr and Mawdsley winning gold in Rome has been viewed over 2.5m times.
“I was completely taken aback by the reaction. It exploded, which is lovely,” he says.
“It was only when I got back from Rome and that’s when I realised how big it was, it felt like everyone had seen it.”
Last weekend, Allen was in Scotland covering the British Open and the Dubliner has commentated on some of the biggest moments in Irish sport during his career.
It’s 40 years since he first started working for RTE and the graveyard shift on radio during the 1984 LA Games proved a valuable learning ground.
“I was on a shift between nine o’clock at night and nine o’clock in the morning, so you could make any manner of mistakes and not too many people would’ve noticed them,” he says, laughing.
Four years later he was in Seoul reporting on his first Olympics and sitting alongside Jimmy Magee.
Watching the Memory Man in action proved transformative.
“I learned so much from watching Jimmy,” says the 63-year-old.
“Jimmy taught me how to make the space work. If you’ve got a minute of commentary or reportage, how to use that.
“If you try to cram too much into a short space — the ear doesn’t pick it up as easily as somebody who slows down a bit and takes 10 per cent out of their script.
“Jimmy had so many little innovations. I just took notes, like a student and a professor.”
During a major athletics championships Allen will spend the hours outside of the live broadcasts studying each event and the competitors involved, preparing for nearly every eventuality.
“You have to prepare for everything that’s in front of you,” says Allen.
“You could have pole vault qualifying, shot putt, javelin, 400m heats, 1500m heats, heptathlon or decathlon, all in the one session.
“Once the television pictures change to the decathlon or to the shot putt or the high jump or whatever it is, you have to be ready. And you have to have your work done.
“But you should leave about 80 per cent of your notes on the cutting room floor. You have to let the pictures breath.”
Allen spent a large portion of his career working in radio, painting pictures for the listeners.
Working in television is a different proposition, but he has adapted his style over the years, dialling down his commentaries and trying not to overload the viewer.
In Rome he found the perfect words and the perfect way to describe the mixed relay victory as it unfolded.
The pressure to deliver is always there, but the next opportunity to call an Irish gold medal home came quicker than he expected, courtesy of Ciara Mageean.
“I started to feel pressure straight away. Ciara’s race was just a couple of days later and I thought I better do justice to this,” he says.
“I saw her getting boxed in and again I was trying to prise open that gap for her with my words. I just wanted to call her across the line in front.”
At the recent National Championships in Santry, legendary Irish athletics figure Frank Greally presented the Rome relay squad with a poem he’d written with photos from their victory in a frame.
Allen was given one too.
“He gave one to me because I’m mentioned in the poem for the commentary. I’ll have to get them all to autograph it at some stage,” he says.
Away from the mic he’s a huge Elvis Costello fan and thinks ‘I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down’ could be the perfect line to sum up the breathless aftermath of an Olympic broadcast.
As a kid he treasured the
autographs of Gary Sprake and Jack Charlton that his father brought back from the Phoenix Park races one day in 1970 and his passion for sport has never dimmed.
In Paris he will be back behind the mic, back with his notes, hoping to call Ireland’s first track medal since O’Sullivan at Sydney 2000.
And once the preparation is complete he knows he can hold his nerve.
“I’ll be cramming when I get to Paris,” he says.
“The Olympics is bigger than the world championships or anything else. It’s just once every four years and an Olympic medal on the track for Ireland is so rare.
“I kind of like to immerse myself in the emotion. Why not?
“My natural tendency is to feel the sense of joy when you see a green singlet right up there.”
Pump it up.
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