OLYMPICS: Adam Hession & Sive Brassil Among Recipients For Paris Scholarships

Bullaun's Adam Hession and Ballinasloe's Sive Brassil are both among the recipients of Paris Scholarships as Olympic Federation of Ireland revealed on Wednesday that preparations are already underway for the Summer Olympic Games in Paris 2024.

A total pot of $350,000 will be distributed to Olympic hopefuls with the Women’s Hockey team awarded the team grant of $100,000. The fifteen individual grants to a total of $250,000 were awarded to athletes from twelve sports.

The funding for the grants is primarily provided through a combination of International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Olympic Solidarity programme funding and OFI funding, split $250,000 from the IOC and the remaining $100,000 from the OFI to allow for a greater number of scholarship awards in Ireland.

The scholarships aim to support the athletes in their preparation for Paris, and to assist on the qualification journey. Athletes were nominated by the national federations and are representative of a mix of Olympians targeting a second Games, and athletes targeting an Olympic debut.

Making the announcement, Team Ireland Chef de Mission for the Paris Olympic Games, Gavin Noble, said,

“Thirty-five individual nominations were received from nineteen member sports for the Paris Scholarship fund, and today we are delighted to formally announce our Paris scholars and of course our support of the women’s hockey team. In the Tokyo cycle, twelve scholarships were awarded, and from those nine athletes qualified for the Games, with two finalists at the Tokyo Olympics. Naturally, we are aiming to build on those results. Through the support of the International Olympic Committee Solidarity Fund, and with the additional backing of Permanent TSB, Allianz and Deloitte, we are able to fund more athletes, to a higher level than ever before, and it is very much part of our performance and commercial strategy that we continue to move in this direction.”

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Details of all recipients are below:

TEAM GRANT - $100,000

Women’s Hockey Team

The Women’s Hockey Team were awarded the team grant of $100,000 to assist with their preparations towards Paris 2024. The team consists of both experienced players who competed in the Tokyo Olympics, and emerging talent looking to make their Olympic debut in Paris.

INDIVIDUAL GRANTS – $15,000 PER PERSON

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Adam Hession (Boxing)
Adam (21) is a featherweight (57kg) from Galway, a two-time Irish elite champion who, in 2019, became the first male boxer from his club to win an Irish senior title in 2019. He is from the village of Bullaun and boxes for the Monivea club where his dad is a coach. Adam won a silver medal at last year’s European U22 Championships in Italy and made his international senior debut at the 2021 World Championships in Bulgaria last October where he was regarded as unlucky not to get the decision against a Russian. He has been part of the IABA’s High Performance team since 2019 and captained the Irish team at the recent European Championships in Armenia.

Sive Brassil (Modern Pentathlon)
Sive (28) is from Ballinasloe, Co Galway and came to the sport through ‘pony club’. She is the reigning Irish champion and has competed for Ireland since 2008, achieved a handful of top 15 finishes on the World Cup circuit and qualified for the prestigious World Cup finals three times in-a-row (2017-2019) In 2018 she was part of the Irish women’s relay team that won silver at the European Championships and narrowly missed qualifying for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (ranked 40^th, just outside top 36 who qualified). She has a degree in Spanish and French from UCD and is based in Ireland, training full-time. She finished 13^th at the Budapest World Cup in May in pentathlon’s ultra-competitive new ‘elimination’ format and her current world ranking is #28.