Emma Duffy Reports from Paris

PARALYMPICS IRELAND HAVE condemned online racial abuse of one of the Team Ireland athletes at Paris 2024.

Paralympics Ireland say there were several responses of this nature to a social media post of Deaten Registe before the 22-year-old swimmer competed at his first Games.

They actively blocked and reported the users, and spoke to Registe and his family after he finished competition. Registe, who has an intellectual impairment, finished sixth in the SB14 100m Breaststroke Final. 

Paralympics Ireland CEO Stephen McNamara hit out at “keyboard warriors” and called on social media companies to take action as he informed the Irish media of the incident over the weekend.

“That is the equality we don’t want,” said McNamara. ”It happens in all sports, it happened in the Olympic cycle with some athletes and it has happened now with Deaten.

“I think the reality is, and I think Irish people would support this: we want those athletes, they represent us. We don’t want these keyboard warriors, they don’t represent us.

“I think Ireland is having a really difficult time at the moment in relation to that. I think it’s happening all across Europe as well in terms of the voices that are coming through social media. I think social media companies should do more.

“I think that when an athlete at a Paralympic Games just happens to have a different skin tone to maybe the rest of the population that this person lives with becomes a target of their ire, it’s just not acceptable. And I think everyone in Ireland would support that.”

“From our point of view, we have a duty of care to the athletes,” McNamara added. “We didn’t discuss it with the athlete at the time. These things self correct a lot on social media, you’ll have one person saying one negative thing and ten or 100 people coming in supporting the athlete.

“Obviously through the duty of care, we have spoken to the athlete and the athlete’s family and we don’t want that to happen again. Ultimately we can’t guarantee it won’t happen again.

“But what we have seen across the whole Games is such a huge swell of support for all of our athletes.”

Paralympics Ireland CEO Stephen McNamara. Dave Winter / INPHO Dave Winter / INPHO / INPHO

Meanwhile, McNamara says Paralympics Ireland “will own” falling short of their stated target of eight to ten medals, set in conjunction with Sport Ireland in 2019.

The 35-strong team will return to Dublin this afternoon with six medals — one gold, three silver and two bronze — after Katie-George Dunlevy (twice with Linda Kelly and once with Eve McCrystal), Róisín Ní Riain and Orla Comerford climbed the podium in Paris.

There were six other fourth-placed finishes.

“Where we got the eight to ten target was, we knew we had eight to ten athletes that were in the hunt for a medal, even if that was a bronze medal,” McNamara said.

“What we have seen is 12 top-four finishes. Some of them have been really close, they have been fingertips, others have been European records and have actually still been quite far away from the top three. Some have been milliseconds off.

“The reality is the margins are that tight. Yes, it’s six, and we’ll own that but definitely, we were in the hunt for others realistically.”

McNamara also called for Paralympic athletes to be considered through awards season, with a particular nod to cycling legend Dunlevy, who won half the Paris 2024 medal tally.

“We have just had an athlete win her eighth medal, eight medals across three different Games on the bike, which is just phenomenal, and she’ll go to ceremonies now and she’ll go there knowing she is not going to win them because somebody else has always won after every Paralympic and Olympic cycle. That is not taking anything from those Olympic athletes.

Katie-George Dunlevy won half of Ireland's medal tally. Tom Maher / INPHO Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO

“This year, we need to understand why is it going into those rooms and going into awards that they are just going in to make up the numbers. There is a bit of box ticking there. I think it would be really brave for those judges who decide those things to really reflect on what is the achievement there and some of it might be because they don’t understand the achievement. But those panels really need to sit back and go, ‘Actually that is phenomenal, if this wasn’t the Paralympian that did this, would they be a shoe-in?’

“What Daniel [Wiffen] and Kellie [Harrington] did was phenomenal, but they will go into those rooms knowing they will have a fair crack at this, whereas out athletes will go in there knowing, ‘I’ll get a nice dinner out of it, we’ll get dressed up, we’ll get a nice hotel for the night, we’ll be on the TV again, and then the able-bodied athlete will win it.’”

McNamara added that he had approached Dunlevy to stay on for LA 2028. The Paralymic great is weighing up her future, while Ellen Keane, Ronan Grimes and Eve McCrystal have all announced their retirements.

“After every athlete has competed, I have used the communication channel that most young people use which is Instagram and slipped into all of their DMs and said, ‘Well done, really proud of you,’ with a very simple message, ‘LA 28, let’s go.’”