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Sports and Recreation
The Irish are avid sports fans, especially of their native games of Gaelic football--a cross between football (soccer) and rugby--and hurling, which resembles a rough-and-tumble version of field hockey. Both are promoted by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; Cumann Lúthchleas), founded in 1884 to revive native Irish sports. Today there are several hundred thousand members of the GAA who play these games as amateurs, and the professional teams compete in the All-Ireland matches that draw huge crowds to Dublin's Croke Park. Handball is also a traditional Irish sport.
Football and rugby are widely popular, often played in sold-out stadiums in Dublin. In 1990 the national football team reached the quarterfinals in the World Cup, and Irish players are prominent on the rosters of professional teams throughout the world. The Irish are extremely passionate about horse racing, and the Irish Derby draws Europe's best competitors to The Curragh, the flat racetrack in County Kildare. Greyhound racing at Shelbourne Park in Dublin is also well attended. In bicycling, Dubliner Steven Roche won the Tour de France and the World Championship in 1987.
The Olympic Council of Ireland was formed in 1922, and Ireland's official participation in the Olympic Games began in Paris in 1924. (Irish athletes had competed for Great Britain in previous games, since 1896.) Since then Ireland has missed only the 1936 games. The first medal by an Irishman came in 1896, when John Boland won a gold medal in tennis for Great Britain. The first medal for the Irish team came in 1928 in Amsterdam, where Patrick O'Callaghan won a gold in the hammer throw. In 1996 Michelle Smith became the first Irish female athlete to win a gold medal, capturing three gold medals in swimming. Four years later distance runner Sonia O'Sullivan won a silver medal in the 5,000-metre event at the 2000 Olympic Games.
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