Olympic medal chase was exhilarating but Irish sport has to tread carefully now
Context is always needed. This was Ireland's biggest ever team, with 133 athletes. That made Ireland the 22nd biggest team in Paris. By that crude metric, Ireland overachieved by finishing 19th on the medal table, but not by a huge amount.
There is a word in Portuguese - saudade - that has no direct equivalent in English. It describes an inexplicable longing, a yearning for something special, something transcendent.
So maybe it's the best word to describe what happens to so many of us when the Olympics come around.
There should be another word to describe the curious melancholia that creeps up when you know the circus is upping sticks and disappearing for another four years. Los Angeles 2028 seems like a galaxy far, far away. . .
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The numbers game is a big part of the Olympic experience.
There were the breathless press releases from RTE recording staggering viewership figures for the finals of Irish athletes in different sports.
There is the medal table that so many become obsessed with. Ireland had a record return of seven medals, placing this country 19th on the medal table - out of 206 teams that took part.
Nearly half of the teams in Paris didn't win a single medal.
But context is always needed. This was Ireland's biggest ever team, with 133 athletes. That made Ireland the 22nd biggest team in Paris.
By that crude metric, Ireland overachieved by finishing 19th on the medal table, but not by a huge amount.
So many get drawn in by the unfamiliar during the Games that it's tempting to think it will have an impact on the sporting landscape.
Not a bit of it. The vast majority of those enraptured by everything from badminton to breakdancing will move on to the Premier League when it kicks off next week, or the new rugby season, or the club GAA championships.
There's a reason why most Olympic sports are buried on the schedules of Eurosport or even just streamed on YouTube.
Outside of the Olympics, the vast majority of sports fans don't bother with them.
There is a democracy to the Games that makes them attractive, but it's one that doesn't stand up to close scrutiny.
All the Olympic medals look the same and there are plenty who make the argument that they have the same value in every sport.
Really? Take dressage or the modern pentathlon. Two sports with tiny participation across the world.
Can we really claim that a gold in either of those has the same value as one in athletics or swimming or boxing - sports with high numbers everywhere?
A cox in a rowing crew that wins gold gets the same medal as the marathon champion. Think they're anywhere near similar achievements?
Thomas Barr and Rhasidat Adeleke have both placed fourth in Olympic sprint finals. Is a sailing silver or a showjumping bronze more significant than that?
There are plenty who don't see beyond medals and would argue that is the case.
But the level of competition that Adeleke, for example, faces is unlike most others ever to represent Ireland at the Games have faced.
Her time of 49.28 is the joint highest ever to not medal at an Olympics. It would have been good enough for gold in four of the five Games before Paris.
After her heat, Adeleke told David Gillick - who shone for RTE at trackside - that the Stade de France felt like Santry, given the amount of Irish fans in the arena.
Those of us who know Morton Stadium in Santry well raised a quizzical eyebrow.
Even the national championships in Santry struggle to get the turnstiles clicking. Most years, the crowd numbers just a few hundred - and most of those are friends and family of the athletes.
Bar Harrington, this was a poor Olympics for the boxers, with only one win between the other nine fighters.
But there was a time when Ireland's Olympics was all about the boxers. They'd come back laden with medals and there would be loose talk about showcasing them outdoors or in the 3 Arena.
Then reality would bite and they'd return to action in the battered old National Stadium, with acres of empty seats.
There is a homecoming reception for the Ireland team on Monday in Dublin, and it is richly deserved.
Across the board in Irish sport, there is enlightened leadership. It's not that long since Ireland's Olympic medallists would come out the front door of the plane, with the rest shunted out the back.
There is also more of a duty of care to Olympians once the cheers fade. That help is important and, if it needs more funding for expert guidance, then so be it.
Just listen to what boxer Emmet Brennan has said about how he went off the rails after Tokyo. The comedown from the Games can be very hard for athletes to deal with.
More public money is going to be pumped into sport and it's to be hoped that much of the investment is in people. Far too many elite Irish performers are coached by volunteers, trying to fit in their coaching with their day jobs.
And it's important that we don't become obsessed with medals. It's far harder to win athletics medals than in most other disciplines but running tracks are a fantastic community asset. We need more of them, all over the country. And it's been proven that a background in athletics as a child is a great plus to those who move on to other sports.
It's important too to remember that winning the right way matters. There is a long list of Olympic medallists who were later banned for doping.
There are Irish athletes in different sports who will look at champions with gold glittering around their neck from Paris and they'll be wondering. Let's hope they make the right decisions. That matters more than any medal.
Give us clean losers rather than dirty winners any day.
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