Olympics - Athletics: Olive Loughnane provided the latest good news story for the Irish team at the Beijing Games this morning with a sterling performance in the women's 20 kilometres walk. Loughnane may not have claimed a medal but shaved over 90 seconds off her personal best to finish in seventh place.
Russia's Olga Kaniskina led from the start and battled through relentless rain to win Olympic gold.
World champion Kaniskina jumped to the lead on her first step and slowly pulled away from the pack as she built a decisive one-minute lead going into the final kilometers to finish in an Olympic record of one hour, 26 minutes and 31 seconds.
"I haven't broken the world record because of the weather (but) it was better than a sunny and hot day," Kaniskina said.
Kaniskina's victory gave Russia their fifth athletics gold, placing the Russians atop the track and field medal table ahead of Jamaica, with four gold medals.
Norway's Kjersti Platzer, silver medalist in 2000, finished second with a 36-second deficit, while Italy's Elisa Rigaudo took bronze after a late surge brought her back into medal contention.
Loughnane's time of 1:27:45 was well inside her previous best of 1:29:17.
"If you had told me last night I'd do 87:45 I would have said I had to make the medals," Loughane said after her race.
"Of course I'm a bit disappointed to be 30 odd seconds away from the medals but when I saw the pace and how quickly it was going I knew it was too fast.
"I remember thinking around 12-14km 'God, this is tough'. I did amazingly well and couldn't have done any more. I was prepared for it to be hot today but I smiled when I saw the weather."