"Go on, Michael - finish it, finish it, finish it!" The Irish men's basketball team in the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai has come to Zhongshan school in the city's Lu Wan district for a training session. It has been an exciting week for these athletes, but also a difficult one. They arrived in China last Friday; five days later, the competition proper still hasn't begun.
"We're all going a bit stir crazy to tell you the truth," says their coach, Colm Barry. "We did an hour of training yesterday, the first in a couple of weeks. It's very hot, and we were outdoors, but it was good to get out and about." Waiting is an integral part of the games. Before they can start, a "divisioning" process must take place in each sport.
"All the teams in the competition have to play short games of 10 minutes or so," Barry explains. "Your strongest five have to start, and everybody has to play each game to show what you're capable of. Then the organising committee sorts the teams into divisions of roughly equal ability, so when we go into competition, we play only teams of our own ability."
Divisioning ensures that athletes of varying levels of ability don't have to compete against each other. It gives everyone a chance, but also makes for complicated awards, with up to three gold medals up for grabs in an event.
"For every athlete, everywhere, there are certain skills prescribed by Special Olympics," Barry says. Does he know which are the good teams? Barry shakes his head. "Absolutely no idea. You have no idea until the day," he says.
Rebecca Xiao has been assigned to the team as official interpreter. Like all the Chinese volunteers we've met, she wears a bright orange T-shirt and is young and energetic. She is a medical student in Shanghai and wants to be a dentist."All my class are volunteers. I like it very much, to help others. To be a doctor, you should have a kind heart," she says.
Before she was assigned to the Irish basketball team, did she know anything about Ireland? "Very little," she says. "Just history." Good history or bad? "Both. We were told Ireland is very beautiful and very wealthy."
In another suburb of Shanghai, at the sports arena of Jiatong University, the divisioning process is under way. A line of adjudicators sits behind a table on a raised dais in the centre of the vast hall.
As each team takes its turn at the basket, the assembled opposition claps, cheers and groans. It's a meticulous, somewhat intimidating process, but when Team Ireland's turn comes, the athletes acquit themselves well. Peter and Caroline O'Brien are supporting their daughter Aisling, a team member. The basketball competition will unfold over the next six days, culminating in medal rounds on Monday and Tuesday next. On the court, Aisling positions herself, aims, and scores with ease. Her proud dad turns to the Chinese volunteers beside us. Her name, he tells them, means "dream" in Irish. With any luck, all Team Ireland's dreams will be good ones.