Irish Sports Minister: 'Unless You're Black and African You're Not Going to Do Well in Sprint'

The man at the right is Martin Cullen, Ireland's Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism. In discussing his views on how Irish Olympians can win more gold medals, Cullen expressed some interesting viewpoints about which sports Irish people can excel at and which sports they can't.

From the Irish Independent:

"Obviously, unless you're black and African you're not going to do well in sprint or middle distance," he says. "We'll get the odd one coming through, like a Sonia [O'Sullivan] or an Eamonn Coghlan, but we'll deal with them as they come. But the likes of the javelin, the discus, the pole vaulting, these are the ones being won by white Europeans. Physically and mentally we're suited to them, and it's easy to see how we could do well here."

Almost as surprising as those quotes is the way they're presented in the Irish Independent, which is Ireland's top-selling daily newspaper. In the United States, a government official who made such comments would probably lose his job, but the Irish Independent praises him for speaking a "vaguely politically incorrect truth."

Via Deadspin.