Huge crowds expected to welcome home golden boy Rhys…
By Lesley Walsh
GOLDEN boy Rhys McClenaghan will be given a hero’s welcome in his hometown on Friday, when he will show fans his prized ‘first gold medal for Newtownards’.
The public event, which will honour athletes from Ards and North Down who competed in the 2024 Olympics, follows Rhys’s return from Paris on Monday when he flew into Dublin with his Team Ireland squad, for a massive public reception.
Rhys will be in the spotlight alongside gold medal winning relay swimmer, Jack McMillan of Team GB and Northern Ireland, Bangor runner, Rachel McCann, who was selected for Team Ireland’s relay women’s and mixed squads and Bangor’s Abi Lyle, Ireland’s only dressage competitor.
Portaferry’s running heroine, Ciara Mageean, whose Olympic dream of competing in the 1500m final was dashed due to injury, is hoped will also appear at the public event.
The borough is ‘proud to have had the most Olympians of any borough in Northern Ireland at this year’s Summer Olympics’, confirmed a council statement.
“The fun will start from 4pm with music, entertainers and give-aways; special guests will join us from around 6.30pm.”
Rhys, now a grand slam victor, with an Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European championship all under his belt, will be honoured first with a parade commencing at his local gym, Origin Gymnastics, at Dairy Hall Lane, leading to Conway Square for the main event.
He returned from the French capital as part of the most successful Team Ireland in history, alongside two other local men, gold medallist swimmer Daniel Wiffen from Magheralin and rower Philip Doyle from Lisburn, who won a bronze.
Rhys is also Ireland’s most successful gymnast.
Touching down at Dublin airport this week, he said the athletes were amazed by the number of well wishers who showed up to greet them, expressing awe at the amount of support which he said athletes ‘only got a taste of over social media’.
Reflecting on his amazing victory, 25-year-old Rhys said: “It sounds amazing. It sounds like a dream come true.
“It still feels like a dream. But it’s a lifetime of work culminating into one little moment, and this little moment is what you are seeing right now.
“It’s the first gold medal for Newtownards in the Olympics, so I hope I’ve made everyone back home proud.”
The gymnast also spoke of the victory in light of his disappointment in the Tokyo games.
“That to me is the beauty of gymnastics, one tiny error can send you landing on your head. That’s what makes the sport exciting to me. It happened to me in Tokyo, but I’m glad to say it didn’t happen to me this time and we get to walk away as Olympic champions,” he said.
He said he works on his focus every day in training, so that when it comes to competing with an arena full of 15,000 people like it was in Paris, ‘to me it’s just another training session’.
“It’s about tricking your mind into thinking ‘I’m just in the gym with my coach doing one more routine’,” he said.
