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36
THE LAST WORD
August/September 2012 www.esb.ie/em
PLAYING AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL
Gold and Bronze Olympic medal winner and Olympic Council of Ireland CEO Stephen Martin talks to EM
Winning an Olympic medal is the pinnacle of athletic achievement. Indeed, just participating in the games is an accomplishment only an unimaginably small number of people can aspire to. For example, in the entire history of the modern games just 6,800 athletes from Great Britain and 870 from Ireland have participated.
And the medals haul has been 800 for Britain and just 23 for Ireland. That’s an average of less than one medal per Olympiad for this country and an indication of the scale of the achievement of the members of Team Ireland in just stepping out on the track for the opening ceremony in London this year.
“The most important thing about Olympic participation is that everyone takes lots of good things back with them afterwards
In this light, the fact that the Chef de Mission and Deputy Chef de Mission of the 2012 team have three Olympic medals between them is nothing short of extraordinary. Chef de Mission Sonia O’Sullivan won silver in Sydney while her deputy, Olympic Council of Ireland Chief Executive, Stephen Martin won bronze in Barcelona and Gold in Seoul playing for the Great Britain hockey team.
In an extraordinary career he captained both the Great Britain and Irish hockey teams playing 94 international matches for the former and 135 for Ireland, taking in three European Cups, 10 Champions Trophy tournaments, one World Cup, and three Olympic Games along the way. Not surprisingly the Northern Irishman received an MBE for his services to hockey in 1993.
“At the time you were able to play for both teams and I was delighted to be able to”, he recalls. Having retired at the age of 32 in 1992 – following a sixth place finish at the Barcelona Games – he moved into full time sports administration.
“Hockey had more or less been my life since I got my first senior international cap at the age of 19”, he explains. “I had been working for Ulster Hockey since I finished my studies at the University of Ulster, Jordanstown. Ireland did ask me if I would go on for one more World Cup with the team but I didn’t want to go on past my sellby date. I was picking up more injuries by then and I decided that it was right to retire at that juncture. But it still took me a while to properly say I had retired.”
But he didn’t stray far from the sports field and started working with the Northern Ireland Sports Council as Head of Sports Science and Talent Identification. “I had a very mixed role which allowed me to be innovative and develop new things. I was approached by the Chief Executive of the British Olympic Association in 1998 to become their Director of Athlete Services and the following year I became the association’s Deputy Chief Executive.”
The initial plan had been for Martin to split his time between London and Belfast but he soon found himself full time in England. “This was just prior to Sydney and I was given responsibility for developing high performance for the Olympics. I was involved in running the Medical Centre and the Technical Department as well as planning for the Games so it was a bit of a jump for me.”
He was also Deputy Chef de Mission of Team GB for the Sydney and Athens Games and the Salt Lake City Winter Olympiad as well as being involved in the London bid for this year’s Games. “I still remember standing in Trafalgar Square on the day we were awarded the Games and I am very proud to have been a part of that.”
He returned to Ireland in 2005 to take up the role of Chief Executive of the Olympic Council of Ireland. “I wanted to make the step up to the Chief Executive position and that particular role interested me especially because of my Irish background”, he explains.
The differing scale of the two organisations makes the role even more interesting. “In the BOA we had forty full-time staff”, he notes. “Here we have four full-time staff and the support of some part-time people. The work of the officers such as Pat Hickey is also vitally important. All of the staff here have to be multi-functional.”
His own primary duties see him responsible for the management and preparation of the Irish Olympic team, including all the planning and logistics. The work for one Olympiad begins almost as soon as the previous one ends. Among other things, qualifying standards have to be established with the various sporting bodies. “It’s important that there is certainty and everyone knows what they have to do to qualify.”
The Council also organises seminars and management training programmes for the different sports to aid in preparation for the Games. And then of course there is the enormous undertaking of bringing the team to London. This begins with the final training preparations of the different sports. “About half of them went to England for their final preparations while the others went to places which they felt suited them better. The Boxers went to Italy for example.”
After that there are the arrangements for accommodation in the Olympic Village which are not as straightforward as might first be thought. “There will be 17,000 athletes and officials at the Games and for many of our athletes it will be their first time in a multi-sport environment. Some of them have different training schedules and like to get up early while some of them don’t – all these things have to be catered for. Also, some athletes will request a room to themselves the night before competition while others won’t. The most important things about the accommodation in the village are to be close to food and transport. We worked closely with the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games on this.”
A first for these games is that each athlete got two tickets free of charge for their family members. “I’d like to thank our partners Electric Ireland and Proctor & Gamble for their assistance with this”, says Martin. “Also, Electric Ireland has assisted us with the development of a mobile phone app to enable the public communicate with the athletes before and during the Games.”
Despite his own hugely successful history in the Olympics he is not focussed on a medal count. “The most important thing about Olympic participation is that everyone takes lots of good things back with them afterwards and I am just delighted to have played a small part in their achievements.”
