The week Irish swimming came of age yet also showed a dark sordid underbelly from the past (2024)

It seemed there was a parallel world in operation this week in Irish swimming. In Paris at the Olympic Games the coming of age of the sport was unfolding in La Defense, where a rugby stadium had been transformed into a state-of-the-art swimming pool in 36 days.

Mona McSharry and Daniel Wiffen played on heart strings with career-changing and life-affirming efforts in the breaststroke and freestyle events. Two days, two medals. A bronze and a gold. Irish swimming 2.0.

Never in the history of the sport in Ireland has there been so much positive attention directed towards Irish swimming. McSharry tipped out defending Olympic champion Lilly King of the United States and world champion Benedetta Pilato of Italy by 0.01 seconds to win the bronze medal; Wiffen gilded the lily, flagging an extraordinary talent by swimming his 800m in an Olympic record time.

For those raised on the slim pickings of international success in swimming this week has been transformative for the sport in reaching a wider audience – McSharry’s authenticity and Wiffen’s everyman, geeky appeal representing a paradigm shift.

The wins have moved swimming miles, advanced it decades and like boxing and rowing it has become a relevant sport for people to follow for more than ambition and courage.

But in Dublin this week the mood was starkly different as serial child rapist 78-year-old Derry O’Rourke apologised in court for shattering the life of a woman who was in his care as a hopeful young swimmer 35 years ago. Jailed for 10 years for raping her when he was coaching her as a teenager, O’Rourke’s age has been no deterrent to a strong feeling within the swimming community of justice being served. Again.

It will be his second time going to jail having been released in 2007 after his first conviction in 1998. I remember being in court for the last trial, when many in the public gallery could not hold back their tears as they listened to his victims speak. O’Rourke apologised then too for what he had done. This week was his second apology for the same offences against a different child.

Last time in court one by one each survivor stood up to tell their story. Frustrated, tearful and scared by O’Rourke’s crimes against them, they addressed him in person, faced him across the court and spoke truth to power.

O’Rourke had by then lost his control but in their tiny lives as child swimmers he was all powerful. He could put children into national squads or leave them out. He could ensure they got Irish swimming togs and bags and stayed in hotels. He could make them feel special.

He was a dream-maker for talented young swimmers, and what was shown in court most recently was exactly what was shown in 1998 – that children who he said showed promise were selected for special treatment. That was O’Rourke’s play book, the modus operandi of a child molester.

Sitting there that day in 1998, O’Rourke was as he appeared this week in photographs. Diminished, smaller, older and beaten down.

The judge back then, perhaps taken by the huge emotional toll it was taking, at least twice interjected to say there was no compelling reason for the women to speak because O’Rourke was going to prison. They believed there was a reason. And so they stood up and with extraordinary dignity and courage walked to the dock and spoke. They told the court how he had raped them as children, what and how they had suffered in his care.

A one-time national figure in Irish swimming, this was the man who had headed the sport in 1980 and 1992 as Ireland’s Olympic coach. O’Rourke was the career-maker for the Irish Amateur Swimming Association, which was later disbanded in 1999.

In the swimming politics of the time George Gibney was also a powerful figure. Appointed coach to the Irish swimming squad for Seoul 1988, he controlled the sport before standing down from his position in 1999, explaining he had to devote more time to the Trojan Club Swimming Club and sports centre he managed in Dublin.

The real reason was quite different. Gibney had been arrested for similar offences to those of O’Rourke before he canvased for O’Rourke to get the job he once held himself.

For a tidy narrative this week after a strange coincidence of timing between the Dublin courts and Paris Olympics, we could talk about the beauty of Paris and the beast of Dublin. We could comment on how swimming has transformed itself and grown into Swim Ireland, a modern child-friendly organisation that has acted faithfully on recent allegations made against members which have resulted in one imprisonment and one resignation.

It has been Irish swimming’s most thrilling week with more to come from Wiffen. But the page cannot fully turn yet, not while Gibney still roams free, warming his ageing bones in Altamonte Springs in Florida.