LockerRoom: Wow. The Olympics really beat you up, don't they? I mean there you are at the start all bright-eyed and hopeful and ready to give two weeks of your life to the big circus. You've come to terms with the commercialism and the drugs and got over that wave of nausea which swept over you when you saw that Jimmy Magee and Michelle Smith were canoodling between the covers of the RTÉ Guide.

You've got your optimism back. Got your head right. You've prepared yourself to shed tears when you hear the Anthem being belted out. You are willing to stop slouching when you see the flag going up the pole. Every morning you get up and whistle all that stuff about it being a new dawn and of course that light dew of hopefulness gets burned off as the sun gets higher in Athens. By evening time it's like reading the casualty lists of war.

Of course you shed great, salty tears for RTÉ also. Poor RTÉ. The national station is like a beggar admitted to an all-you-can-eat restaurant. Determined to make the most of things, RTÉ have to talk this one up - 16 hours a day of talking it up, in fact. But the food is poor. Every evening is a solemn post-mortem. Another reputation stashed in the necropolis.

You can see good men and women ageing as the month goes past. What went wrong, Gary? Why, Neville, why? Is there a solution, Jerry, is there? We can't take this anymore.

There've been little slivers of consolation. Sonia of course. Without Sonia the Olympics are unimaginable. There are kids out there in their late teens who think Sonia is a great drama which just happens every four years. They think she is a passion play like Oberammergau. The thought that Beijing will be deficient in Sonia is frightening.

In RTÉ they must lie awake at night and wonder if there aren't ways to preserve Sonia in some sort of aspic for another four years and then send her out for better or worse.

There is an odd kind of pleasure to be taken from the dignity of our defeated athletes as well. Maybe they can't walk the walk but they can talk the talk very nicely, thank you. They can articulate beautifully the reasons why they aren't wearing laurels on their head, why there ain't no bling bling on their chests.

This is no small thing. At least we are spared the whingeing of tanned, grant-aided athletes. Taking it on the chin has been what we have done best through these games. From an angry young Adrian O'Dwyer to a skittish Maria McCambridge, from the thoughtful Andy Lee to the eloquent Sam Lynch, we have at least compiled a collection of dignified exits to remember Athens by.

Through it all I've had the strange experience of reading Mark Quinn's book The King of Spring. The tome being the life and times of Peter O'Connor, its cover contains a picture of the springy king himself leaping through the air and sporting a natty little moustache. O'Connor looks to be wearing a vest. He's pale and pinched and could be leaping out of a hospital window so grim is his expression. He was an Olympic champion though. A world-record holder. And a character.

We'd take any one of those three qualities this week.

What makes his story odd reading just now is that he was in his pomp at a time when we Irish and our Irish-American brothers were to track and field what the Ethiopians are today.

The story of Peter O'Connor and the flag is a good and mainly forgotten yarn. In 1906 the Olympic Games were struggling after two lacklustre celebrations in Paris and St Louis. As a trial the event broke from the quadrennial tradition and in order to keep the Greeks quiet allowed Athens to host an Olympic celebration in 1906.

Peter O'Connor travelled to Athens. This in itself was unusual. He had declined to compete in Paris in 1900 as he refused to do so under the British flag. He had opted out of St Louis four years later because his life was a mess. These were big decisions because O'Connor was world class. In 1901 in Waterford he had set a world long-jump record which lasted for 20 years and existed as an Irish record until just 14 years ago.

In 1906 he was in his mid-30s and this time he was tempted. As it turned out he would spend most of the Athens Games filing protests. First he realised on arrival that he and his two compatriots were listed in the programme as being British. They protested and were overruled by the Greek Organising Committee, which was manned by members of the Greek Royal Family, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Royal Family.

The long-jump competition threw up what would essentially be a head-to-head between the world-record holder, O'Connor, and the Olympic champion, Meyer Prinstein of the USA. What happened over the next few hours was one of the great stories of Olympism gone awry.

Two judges, one British and one American, were assigned to supervise the long-jump competition. Immediately the British judge went AWOL, leaving the American, Mathew Halpin, in sole charge of judging and measuring all jumps.

Two things would later transpire: the British were leaving O'Connor to stew in his own juices; Halpin was also manager of the American team.

When he learned this latter fact O'Connor made another protest to Prince George of Greece and was sent away with another flea in his ear.

The run-up track was made of loose cinders, which was normal at big events at the time. Contestants jumping early in the order thus got a considerable advantage as the underfoot conditions were light and springy early on, but as the competition went on the cinder spread and the run-up became uneven. O'Connor was due to jump 38th and Prinstein 40th but when jumping began Prinstein bumped himself out of the order and leapt third.

As the competition progressed the atmosphere deteriorated. It was the custom then not to announce the distance an athlete had jumped until the competition was over. As the distrust grew, O'Connor stationed his own friends around the long-jump pit to judge the length of his own jumps and Prinstein's. It got worse. The longest leap of the day was O'Connor's but it was disallowed by Halpin. Prinstein had injured himself on his second jump and was poor all afternoon.

In the end Halpin declared Prinstein the most dubious of winners on the basis of his first jump of the day. O'Connor went on record that he wanted to beat Halpin to a pulp. Instead he appealed - once more to no avail. The failure of this appeal was, however, even less surprising than the failure of his other protests.

His revenge took place at the flag-raising ceremony to signify the winners. Having watched the Union Jack hoisted in recognition of his second-place finish, O'Connor scrambled up the flag-pole and unfurled a large green flag with the words Érin go Bragh written upon it. He remained at the top of the pole displaying the flag while Con Leahy fought off the Greek constabulary beneath.

This was the first great political act of the Olympic era, preceding Berlin, preceding the black-power salute, preceding it all. There's so much more than that to O'Connor's story though. He deserves a blockbuster movie all to himself. In the meantime should Sonia leg it up a flag-pole tonight and unfurl the favours of the People's Republic of Cork she will merely be following in the tradition of the better Irish Olympians.

And what a way to go out, girl.