Breaking Down Rory McIlroy’s Olympic Problem

By Ben Alberstadt
at Internationaled.org

Published: January 26, 2013

If he had his way, Rory McIlroy would play golf for Northern Ireland’s Olympic team. Unfortunately for the world No. 1, there’s no such team. Instead, players from Northern Ireland are given the option of playing for either Great Britain or Ireland.

Indeed, as McIlroy himself stated, ''If I could and there was a Northern Irish team I'd play for Northern Ireland.”

Were he able to play for Northern Ireland, he’d avoid the personal and political conundrum he finds himself in as a function of where he was born. Additionally, as golf hasn’t been a part of the Olympics for a hundred years, McIlroy can’t lean on the precedent established by golfers from Northern Ireland before him.

The 23-year-old is in a difficult spot.

With the possibility of playing for his birth country removed from McIlroy’s Olympic equation, the golfer from Hollywood, Northern Ireland has three options:

1. Play for Great Britain
2. Play for Ireland
3. Sit out the Olympics

Pursuing any of these three courses of action will, at the very least, ruffle some feathers, and at worst infuriate an entire country.

For McIlroy, the difficulty of his position is apparent: ''I feel Northern Irish and obviously being from Northern Ireland you have a connection to Ireland and a connection to the U.K.'' His true feelings about his nationality and cultural identity, too, are clear; McIlroy feels himself to be both Irish and British, thus making his decision all the more difficult.

The 23-year-old got a taste of the reactions he’s likely to garner when he eventually makes his announcement when he was indelicate enough to state that he felt “more British than Irish” in an interview last year. Responses to issues of cultural identity in Ireland and Northern Ireland are imbued with a significance well beyond what the average American (or citizens of the vast majority of ot...

Article Source: Bleacher Report - Golf

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