TV View: Each to their own, of course, but the thoughts of eating coddle at seven in the morning is enough to leave us feeling as unwell as Matthew Pinsent looked during that medal ceremony on Saturday. Actually, the thoughts of eating coddle at any time of the day would have a similar effect.
"Is it true the sausages are raw?" RTÉ's Blathnaid Ní Chofaigh asked the mother of Irish rower Niall O'Toole, whom she bumped into at the Commercial Rowing Club on Islandbridge in the early hours of yesterday morning, while the rowing fraternity all around her tucked into the unspeakable dish. By God, they're hardy folk, stomachs made of reinforced steel.
"Ah no," Betty reassured us, but it was too late. When the lightweight coxless four final started, not long after, our armchair was vacant. When we returned to our position in front of the telly our face was still as green as the jerseys on the backs of the crew in third place after 500 metres. The sudden sense of well-being was overwhelming.
But it didn't last long. Denmark, Australia, Italy, Holland and Canada set off like they had 300 horsepower engines at the back of their vessels, and that was it.
"They finished last, but that's still sixth in the world," said Neville Maxwell, putting it all in context for Tracy Piggott in the studio. Blathnaid was less compassionate when she spoke to Niall's sister Susan - "you must be gutted" - but if plates of boiled sausages, ham, onions and potatoes were being served around you before eight on a Sunday morning - the whiff invading your nostrils in the most disagreeable of manners - you wouldn't feel too compassionate either.
The morning completed a gloomy Irish Olympic weekend. "It's depressing," said Bill O'Herlihy on Saturday evening. "Depressing," he repeated. He would have said it a third time, but by then we'd got the message. Depressing.
RTÉ, though, had to take a large lump of the blame.
"You were telling me you'd have a plan to fight that Russian if you were Andy Lee," Bill said to his studio guest Michael Carruth.
"Yeah," said Carruth, "basically I'd keep moving on him, Andy has to be very careful." "Has Andy the skill to resist somebody as powerful as that?" asked Bill.
"Of course he does, yeah."
The problem with this analysis? They were talking about Gaydarbek Gaydarbekov, who Lee would meet in the quarter-finals only if he first beat Hassan Ndam Njikam. In other words, this chicken-counting had banjaxed Lee's hopes. Even Noel Andrews was at it. As Gaydarbekov prepared to lay the first of several gloves on Uzbekistan's Sherzod Abdurahmonov he reckoned the Lee camp would "want to have a spy out looking at this". Stop! But, that was that. Lee lost to RTÉ, 27-27. Yeah, sounded like a draw to us too, but Njikam won on something called "countback".
"That is very disappointing," said Bill, more or less echoing what he'd said when Adrian O'Dwyer failed to reach the high jump final. More or less echoing what he'd said when every Irish competitor failed to reach any of the targets our over-exuberant team had set for them.
Mind you, our agony pales next to Paula Radcliffe's. "She's in turmoil," as Steve Cram put it when she ground to a halt in the marathon. Peerless 'til Athens, then a mere mortal. Soul-destroying and cruel, you'd nearly have swapped an Irish bronze for a Radcliffe gold. You might even have eaten a plate of coddle if the return was gold for one of the greatest sportswomen of our time. So long as the sausages weren't raw.
