While the eyes of the world will be on the Paris Olympic Games in the coming weeks, there are just two counties in Ireland that will not be represented.
RTÉ has compiled a list of athletes by county, which shows that Leitrim and Westmeath are the only ones without an Olympian.
There’s no surprise that the lion share goes to Dublin with 36 competitors, which is followed by 16 from Cork, 14 from Down and 12 from Antrim.
Locally Sligo and Galway have four athletes competing each:
Lauren Cadden, Chris O’Donnell (both Athletics), Dean Clancy (boxing) and Mona McSharry (swimming) will fly the flag for the Yeats County.
Aifric Keogh, Fiona Murtagh (both rowing), Beibhinn Parsons (rugby) and Tom Fannon (swimming) will all represent the Tribesmen.
Castelrea’s Aoife O’Rourke (boxing) and Kelly Murphy (cycling) will both represent county Roscommon.
As for Mayo, officially there is one athlete representing the county.
Eric Favors will compete in the shot put section of the athletics, and originally comes from the Rockland County area of New York.
He competes in the coulours of Raheny Shamrocks, but his Irish qualification comes through his Mayo roots.
Eric’s grandmother Margaret Kerr came from Ballina, and she lived in New York for more than 50 years.
Sinéad Diver, a native of Belmullet will also be competing in this summer’s Olympic games for Australia.
She is an Australian record holder in marathon running and enters her second Olympic games after her 10th place finish in Tokyo – the best Olympic finish by an Australian woman in more than 30 years.
Another strong Mayo connection comes in the form of Donegal Olympian Ciara McGing, who will compete in the diving.
Born in London, Ciara has strong family links to both Mayo and Donegal.
On her father’s side of the family, her grandmother came from Srah and grandfather from Croaghrim, both in Tourmakeady.
All eyes will be on Paris and there’ll be particular emphasis locally on the three Mayo connections (that we know of).
The Olympic games has officially begun today in Paris with the Irish men’s Sevens team helping to get the 33rd games underway.
