Irish in Action at the Olympics on Sunday:
- 10.17am: Golf - Shane Lowry (Final round)
- From 10.45am: Athletics - Nicola Tuthill (Hammer qualifying round) - finished 16th in qualifying, four places short of reaching the final.
- From 11.0am: Sailing - Finn Lynch (Dinghy races 7 and 8)
- 11.28am: Golf - Rory McIlroy (Final round)
- 1pm: Cycling - Megan Armitage (Road Race)
- From 1.30pm: Sailing - Eve McMahon (Dinghy races 7 and 8)
- 2.35pm: Canoe Slalom - Liam Jegou (Kayak Cross heat 2)
- 3.0pm: Canoe Slalom - Noel Hendrick (Kayak Cross heat 7)
- 4.20pm: Canoe Slalom - Madison Corcoran (Kayak Cross heat 8)
- 5.37pm: Swimming - Daniel Wiffen (1,500m Freestyle final)
- 8.10pm: Athletics - Cathal Doyle (1,500m semi-finals)
Tennis: RTE2 have left the golf for now and are bringing live coverage of the men’s singles final, Novak Djokovic v Carlos Alcaraz.
Cycling: The women’s road race is about to get under way, all 157.6km of it - there’s live coverage on Eurosport 2.
Golf: This is the current state of play on top of the leaderboard, Xander Schauffele and Jon Rahm leading the field, Rory McIlroy four shots further back. It’s live now on RTE2.
Cycling: Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky, the reigning world champion, is the favourite to take gold in the road race, but there’ll be a strong Dutch challenge from Lorena Wiebes, Demi Vollering and the legend that is Marianne Vos, the 37-year-old who has just about won it all in cycling - including gold in the road race at the 2012 Games. Italy’s Elisa Longo Borghini and Elisa Balsamo and Poland’s Katarzyna Niewiadoma will be expected to be in the medal hunt too.
In an effort to deceive you all in to believing that there’s nothing this blog doesn’t know about Vos, a visit was, of course, paid to Wikipedia. A measure of the achievements of the ‘GOAT’ is that they had to set up an entire separate page from her biography to list all she’s won in the sport. And it would take a sizeable amount of time to scroll down to the bottom of that roll of honour. Gobsmacking.
Cycling: At 1.0, Megan Armitage will become the first female Irish cyclist to compete at the Olympic Games since the late Deirdre Murphy in Sydney in 2000. Remarkably, the 28-year-old native of Shinrone, Co Offaly only took up cycling four years ago after an injury forced her to put her marathon running on hold.
She was a student in Toulouse at the time, during the Erasmus year of her law and French course in UCD, and caught her new sporting bug when she went on a cycling holiday in the Pyrenees. When she returned home during lockdown after Covid hit, she passed her time cycling up and down Slieve Bloom. And here she is, an Olympian cyclist. Netflix have made documentaries out of lesser stories.
Golf: Two birdies in his opening three holes have nudged Rory McIlroy further up the leaderboard - he’s now just two strokes behind joint leaders Tommy Fleetwood, Xander Schauffele and Jon Rahm, and one behind Scottie Scheffler.
Rhys McClenaghan: He’s out and about in Paris, atop an imaginary pommel horse.
Nicola Tuthill: “I’m happy. I’m always looking for that 70 throw, I’ve been at 69.90 twice now in my last two competitions, so I’m dying to break it. I’m not massively far off. But to bring out the 69, yeah, delighted. I’m only 20, I was the youngest in the field, so to be here was amazing. The first throw didn’t go my way, so I was a little bit stressed, but to be able to put out a 68 and then a 69, I’m so happy. I’ve had such a good year, I made the Olympics, which is pretty cool. Keep building, hopefully. I’m not finished yet, I’m going to keep working.”
Daniel Wiffen: Ian O’Riordan was in the Paris La Défense Arena on Saturday morning to see Wiffen cruise to qualification for this afternoon’s 1,500m final, earning himself the key lane four by being the fastest of the eight men to make it through. He’s not just targeting his second gold medal of these Games, though.
“I’ll give you a little insight, I am going to try and crack the world record,” he said. If it happens it happens and if it doesn’t it doesn’t, but I think personally that it’s going to take that to win gold. We’ll see.” You wouldn’t put anything past this fella.
[ Daniel Wiffen on course for Olympic swimming double after heat processionOpens in new window ]
Athletics: Before Saturday evening, the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia (population: 178,696) had never won an Olympic medal of any colour, and then Julien Alfred came along and took gold in the 100m final. She’s a University of Texas team-mate and training partner of our own Rhasidat Adeleke …. who had a 100m win over her earlier in the year. As if we weren’t excited enough about the Tallaght woman. Need it be said, the Saint Lucia folk were a bit chuffed.
Hammer: Nicola Tuthill finishes up with a fine throw of 69.90m. That moved her up to 16th in the overall rankings, four short of the required placing to make the final. But an impressive showing from the 20-year-old who learned her craft in the home-made throwing circle and cage that her father set up for her on their dairy farm in Cork. Finland’s Krista Tervo’s 74.79m throw was the longest in qualification.
Tennis: Novak Djokovic meets Carlos Alcaraz in today’s singles final, in what is a repeat of last month’s Wimbledon decider which the Spaniard won in straight sets. The match will start around 12.30.
Hammer: After failing to register a throw with her first effort, Nicola Tuthill gets on the board with a solid 68.87m with her second. She’s up to sixth in her 16-strong qualifying group with the top 12 going through to the final.
Golf: Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry both produced fine rounds of 66 on Saturday, but Lowry is still nine strokes off the lead, so will need a minor-ish miracle in today’s final round to get himself into contention for a spot on the podium - he teed off at 10.17am. McIlroy, though, has a more than decent chance of a medal if he can find his mojo. He’s tied for sixth, just four shots adrift of leaders Xander Schauffele and Jon Rahm, three behind Tommy Fleetwood, and one short of Hideki Matsuyama and Nicolai Hoejgaard. He starts at 11.28am.
[ Rory McIlroy moves into Olympic gold medal picture after 66 in third roundOpens in new window ]
Hammer: Bandon’s Nicola Tuthill makes her Olympic bow this morning in the qualifying round of the hammer, the 20-year-old the youngest competitor in the field. She made a big impression in the European Championships back in June when she finished ninth in what was her first senior final. She is only the third female Irish thrower to make it to the Olympics, following Patricia Walsh (discus, 1984) and Eileen O’Keeffe (hammer, 2008).
Kellie Harrington: There’s no pulling punches here, so to speak, but it’s been a hugely disappointing Olympics for our boxing team, nine of the 10-strong group making early exits, one or two not helped by peculiar judging, to put it politely. Harrington, then, was left to fly the flag, securing at least bronze with a brilliant display in her quarter-final.
And now we’re talking at least silver after she beat Brazil’s Beatriz Ferreira in her semi-final on Saturday night, the same woman she defeated to win gold in Tokyo. Johnny Watterson was on hand to see Harrington remain on track to retain her Olympic title.
Rhys McClenaghan: Where else would we start our Saturday catch-up but with this fella? After the heartache he endured in Tokyo, he’d have been forgiven for packing it all in and choosing a more leisurely life. But there he was in the Arena Bercy with gold draped around his neck, Ireland’s first Olympic medallist in gymnastics. Magnificent.
Ian O’Riordan was there to witness McClenaghan “again balancing his incredibly cool nerve and biting ambition with another dazzling display of excellence on the pommel horse”. (In time, our consciences will forgive us for hoping the last four competitors in the final would, well, slip off their high horses).
Good morning everyone. Did any of you have the maddest of dreams last night about Ireland winning a medal on each and every one of the last six days at these Olympic Games, the latest a gold for Rhys McClenaghan on Saturday? And then you woke up and realised it all actually happened? Same here. We’re in pinch-yerself territory. We’ve already matched our highest ever medal haul, achieved at London 2012 ….. with a whole week to go.
Lest you forget: Monday: Mona McSharry (bronze). Tuesday: Daniel Wiffen (gold). Wednesday: Kellie Harrington (bronze, at least… and now with another shot at gold). Thursday: Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch (bronze). Friday: Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy (gold). Saturday: Rhys McClenaghan (gold). Sunday: No pressure at all, Daniel Wiffen, but it would be very nice if you could keep this daily dose of delight going in this afternoon’s 1,500m freestyle final (5.37pm).
But after the glut of Irish activity the last week, we have a slightly quieter day today with a mere 11 of our team in action. Among the day’s highlights are finals in the men’s 100m in athletics, the women’s 50m freestyle in swimming, and in the men’s singles in tennis and table tennis.
