Following a series of setbacks, the Irish Olympic team escaped further misfortune when an athlete took a bus instead of a courtesy car that later crashed injuring its occupants.
Race walker Robert Heffernan narrowly escaped being added to a list of Irish athletes who have sustained injuries and accidents because the courtesy car meant to greet him at the airport arrived late, causing him to take the athletes' bus to the Olympic village.
Heffernan had arrived at Athens airport on Tuesday from his training base in the northern town of Ioannina. He opted for the bus when the car didn't arrive, a fortuitous decision given that on returning to the village the car was hit from behind.
The two female occupants, one of whom was driving, were taken to hospital with minor neck injuries.
His good fortune was not matched by fellow race walker Jamie Costin, who was injured in a motor accident on Tuesday morning. Costin will this evening arrive back in Dublin by air ambulance, his Olympic dream shattered by the injuries sustained in the car accident south of Athens, and the rest of his sporting career now dependent on the result of medical treatment.
The 50 km walker faces two courses of treatment - an operation to fuse the fractured fifth vertebra in his lower back with rods, or a period of six to eight weeks' immobility that would allow the damage to heal naturally.
The operation would result in a normally sufficient recovery, but would leave considerable doubt about his future as a race walker.
"It does seem at this stage that Jamie will take the conservative approach and adopt the period of rest," said Mr Michael Quinlan, the athletics team manager.
"In a way I sense a real motivation factor coming out of Jamie's misfortunate, especially in the case of Robert Heffernan. He's very, very determined to go out there and perform the very best he can now."