Olympics - Boxing: Another day at the Workers' Gymnasium, another Irish Olympic medal. Just 24 hours after Paddy Barnes and Kenny Egan secured Ireland's first two medals of the Games, Darren Sutherland repeated the trick with a bone-jarring dismantling of Venezuela's Alfonso Blanco Parra.
As with Barnes and Egan, the result guarantees the 26-year-old Dubliner at least a bronze medal heading into Friday's semi-finals.
Sutherland was always going to be up against it against Blanco, who out-pointed him comprehensively at last year's world championships, but following his stoppage of Nabil Kassel in the last round the Irish fighter opted to employ the same tactics.
Unafraid to go toe-to-toe, not necessarily the smartest game plan at amateur level, Sutherland absorbed the best Blanco could throw at him with some tidy defence work before launching his big left hook to devastating effect.
Blanco came out with all guns blazing, launching attack after attack as he sought to overwhelm Sutherland. But try as he might, the world number two could not find a way through Sutherland's high guard and not one of his blows scored with the judges.
Sutherland, for his part, refused to yield the centre of the ring and as the round progressed began to unload a few telling lefts of his own. Exasperated, Blanco was forced to concede ground as Sutherland's controlled display of precision and power saw him open a healthy 3-0 lead.
It was a pattern that continued in the second round. Blanco may have scored his only point of the bout but Sutherland, still fighting from behind that dogged defence, tagged on another three of his own.
Unsurprisingly, Blanco's earlier exertions began to tell in the final two rounds. No longer on his toes, Sutherland was able to inflict a number of punishing body shots before extending his lead to an emphatic 10 points.
Sutherland, who has fought his way back from a serious eye injury that almost ended his career two years ago, will now fight Britain's James Degale on Friday morning (8am Irish time). Afterwards, he pointed to last year's defeat at the hands of Blanco in Chicago as the turning point in his career.
"I had to go back to the drawing board and fight my style of boxing instead of this tip-tap business," he explained. "That's not my style. Now I've been successfully with my own style which has been brilliant."
Sutherland will now sit down with coach Billy Walsh, study Degale's videos, and work out their strategy for the semi-finals.
"Let's sit down and watch the video, make the tactics, come out and give it my all again," he added.
Today's success was all the sweeter for Sutherland given his recovery from that eye injury.
"With my injury two years ago, I never thought this was going to happen," he said.
Reliving in graphic detail what could have been the end of his career, he explained: "In a routine international bout I got a thumb in the eye. It pushed my eye back inside my head. I had two fractures, I had to be hospitalised for surgery."
"Doctors didn't think I would ever box again. It was six months until I got back into the ring. Here I am today an Olympic medallist."
Walsh was also in ebullient form.
"Anything can happen in these Olympic Games and this is Ireland's best performance since 1956," he said.
"We have gone to the hardest training camps. We mentally prepared these guys, we made it difficult for them. We made it so hard for them that when they came here, it's easy."