bestow the grandeur One of the depressing aspects of the recent Olympic games was the amount of time and energy spent lamenting on our failure to win medals. Okay, we got one, half for the rider and half for the horse. The same song is sung after every Olympics, and we are always told that more money and better facilities will fix the problem and put us into the medals, in sixteen years time according to one politician ! ? ! ! ?. Not winning medals is our usual state, but it doesn't stop us enjoying the efforts of our players. Thousands of people went to Dublin airport to welcome home the Irish team that had participated. And what pleasure our rugby team gives us when they defy the odds and upset the applecart by beating our neighbours. The Olympic ideal is supposed to be the taking part, participation, not the winning, but that once cherished notion is truly dead and buried, it's winner takes all, and the devil takes the hindmost. I heard no one say that every child should have the opportunity to take part in sport. Basic facilities should be in place in every village and town for kids to run or play tennis or kick a ball, round or oval. It is left to voluntary effort to organise games for our children, and if it wasn't for the volunteers in the GAA, soccer and rugby clubs and in fact all sports club, who look after the younger children, we'd be in a bad way. And many of the trainers are only interested in the most gifted players, they want their under eights or twelve's to be champions, so little Jimmy with the two left feet will be left standing on the sideline, cold and wet, Saturday after Saturday, waiting to be called on as third sub for the last three or four unimportant minutes of a game, while the manager dreams of what might have been if he had been given Alex Ferguson's opportunities. Children shouldn't have to be good at sport to get a chance to participate, they should be able to enjoy it, for it's own sake, and as Sonia O'Sullivan's last lonely lap in Athens showed, it is the taking part, not the winning, that bestows the grandeur. Clive Geraghty Cover