Sport in Ireland plays an important role in Irish society. The many sports played and followed in Ireland include Gaelic games, association football, horse racing, show jumping, greyhound racing, basketball, fishing, handball, motorsport, boxing, tennis, hockey, golf, rowing, cricket, and rugby union.
Pádraig Peter Harrington is an Irish professional golfer who plays on the European Tour, PGA Tour and the PGA Tour Champions. He has won three major championships: The Open Championship in 2007 and 2008 and the PGA Championship, also in 2008. He spent over 300 weeks in the top-10 of the world rankings, and reached a career-high ranking of third in July 2008. Harrington was a member of six consecutive Ryder Cup teams between 1999 and 2010. In 2024, he will be an inductee of the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Graeme McDowellMBE is a professional golfer from Northern Ireland. He has a total of eleven tournament victories on the European Tour, and four on the PGA Tour, including one major championship, the 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. In 2022, he joined LIV Golf. McDowell has also represented Ireland at the World Cup and he has been a member of the European Ryder Cup team on four occasions. He has appeared in the top-10 in the Official World Golf Ranking, with a highest ranking position of 4th.
A team representing Ireland as an independent state or polity has competed at the Summer Olympic Games since 1924, and at the Winter Olympic Games since 1992. The Olympic Federation of Ireland (OFI) was formed in 1922 during the provisional administration prior to the formal establishment of the Irish Free State. The OFI affiliated to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in time for the Paris games.
Phillip Peter Dutton, OAM is an Australian-born Olympic-level equestrian rider competing in eventing for the United States of America. He is a dual Olympic gold medalist who formerly competed for his country of birth but now competes for the USA.
Pádraig Amond is an Irish professional footballer who plays as a striker for National League club Woking.
Louis Antoine Smith MBE is a retired British artistic gymnast.
Max Antony Whitlock is a British artistic gymnast. With fourteen medals and six titles in Olympic and world championships, Whitlock is the most successful gymnast in his nation's history, and the most successful pommel horse worker in gymnastics history; he has 8 global medals in the apparatus, including 5 global gold medals. He is a six-time Olympic medalist, winning three golds and three bronzes, and a five time world medalist on the pommel horse with three gold and two silvers.
Mary Hanna is an Australian equestrian. She represented Australia at five Olympic Games in the equestrian discipline of dressage and has competed at the 2020 Games in Tokyo, where she finished 40th in the individual competition.
Jonelle Price is a New Zealand equestrian, competing in eventing. She is married to Tim Price, also a New Zeland eventing rider. They are both competing at top international level.
Great Britain, or in full Great Britain and Northern Ireland, represented by the British Olympic Association (BOA), competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016 and the team of selected athletes was officially known as Team GB. British athletes have appeared in every Summer Olympic Games of the modern era, alongside Australia, France, Greece, and Switzerland, though Great Britain is the only country to have won at least one gold medal at all of them. The team represented the United Kingdom, the three Crown Dependencies, and the thirteen British Overseas Territories, ten of whom sent representatives.
Ireland competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016. This was the nation's twenty-first appearance at the Summer Olympics, having attended every edition, either in its own right or as part of a Great Britain and Ireland team before 1924, with the exception of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Germany.
Paul O'Donovan is an Irish lightweight rower. He is an Olympic gold medallist in lightweight double sculls where he set a new world's best time for that event and is a five-time world champion in single and double sculls.
New Zealand competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016. This was the nation's twenty-third appearance as an independent nation at the Summer Olympics, having made its debut at the 1920 Games and competed at every Games since. The New Zealand team consisted of 199 athletes, 100 women and 99 men, across twenty sports, the first time New Zealand was represented by more women than men at the Summer Olympics.
Events during the year 2016 in Ireland.
Greg Patrick Broderick is an Irish show jumping rider from Thurles, County Tipperary. He represented Ireland at the 2015 European Show Jumping Championships in Aachen, Germany, where he achieved 7th place in team and 31st place in the individual jumping competition.
Clare Abbott is an Irish eventing rider. Representing Ireland, she competed at the 2014 World Equestrian Games and at the 2013 European Eventing Championships.
Jonty Evans is an Irish eventing rider.
Kevin Seaward is a Northern Irish marathon runner from Belfast and an assistant headteacher at a school in Leicestershire. Seaward was part of the Ireland team at the 2016 Summer Olympics and achieved 64th place with a time of 2:20:06, and holds a personal best in the event with a 2:10:09 that he ran at the 2020 Seville Marathon.
The team of the Olympic Federation of Ireland, which competed at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, represented athletes from both the Republic of Ireland and those from Northern Ireland who choose it instead of the Great Britain and Northern Ireland team. Originally scheduled to take place from 24 July to 9 August 2020, the Games were postponed to 23 July to 8 August 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the team's twenty-second appearance at the Summer Olympics, having attended every edition since 1924 except the 1936 Summer Olympics in Germany.
