MARY HANNIGAN'S OLYMPIC TV VIEW:WE WERE listening to Caitriona McFadden's Olympic news round-up on RTÉ yesterday afternoon and she told us about the "nailbiting" women's trap shooting competition in which Satu Makela-Nummela of Finland pipped Slovakia's Zuzana Stefecekova to gold.

The real cliffhanger, though, was the battle for bronze, "a dramatic four-way shoot-off" required to separate the gunslingers, "American mouse hunter Cory Cogdell eventually claiming it."

Mouse-hunting, we thought, was an interesting profession, particularly for a heavily armed Olympian.

Shooting mice, surely, is an excessive response to any threat they might pose, although perhaps kinder than guillotining them as they nibble on an Easi Single.

As it proved, though, Cory is, in fact, a "moose" hunter, which is precisely what Caitriona had said in the first place, meaning our ear-syringing ordeal might be more imminent than we first feared.

A native of Alaska, Cory has been limbering up for the Olympics for the last three years by blowing the heads off any innocent moose she happens to encounter, having been taught her shooting skills by her da, Dick.

"I harvested my first moose a couple of years ago," she said dispassionately, just as if moose weren't real people.

So a moose-slayer from Alaska wins an Olympic medal and Pádraig Harrington, who's only nailed the odd birdie and eagle and the occasional albatross, doesn't?

How can that be right?

We dragged ourselves away from the horsey cross-country-thing in Hong Kong - and that wasn't easy — to watch Pádraig on Sunday night/Monday morning, and to be completely honest about it, we were in no fit state to resume our horsey cross-country-thing viewing after witnessing Pádraig doing a Pádraig in Oakland Hills. Not even the enraptured cry of the BBC's Mike Tucker - "HERE COMES DAISY DICK" - could take our mind off what we'd just witnessed.

Golf, by all accounts, was in the 1900 and 1904 Olympics, so if Pádraig had been around back then we'd be laughing.

We were browsing through the Olympic medals table yesterday, as we plaintively tend to do every four years, and noted that Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are already preparing open-top bus rides through their capital cities (we'd mention them by name but unfortunately we haven't the space) after Rishod Sobirov (60kg) and Rasul Boqiev (bigger lad - 73kg) took bronze in judo.

No disrespect to judo, but ah now.

Morally, Pádraig is our Olympic gold medallist, two medals clear of Rishod and Rasul.

We were determined, though, not to take out our frustrated sense of injustice on the horsey cross-country-thing, not least because Robert Hall was one of RTÉ's commentators and we have a soft spot for Robert.

Alas, he didn't have Ted Walsh beside him, so when the riders approached obstacle number eight on the course - the Yu Hua Tai Rockery - there was no Ted to ask, "What kind of feckin' name is that for a fence?"

This is where we have to own up to just a touch of ignorance. Each horse took about nine-ish minutes to complete the course, and we thought their names were appearing in the top-left corner of the screen.

After roughly two hours Flower Bed's name was still appearing intermittently in the top-left corner so we assumed he/she had yet to finish, perhaps having taken a wrong turn, ending up in Cambodia.

Turns out, though, that Flower Bed was obstacle number three, squeezed between the Panda Playground and Tiger Hill Log.

Robert never told us this, but maybe he just assumed we'd know.

That's the thing, though - the Olympics are a learning experience for all of us. Except, maybe, Jimmy Magee. For example, we watched Andy Murray yesterday playing a man from Chinese Taipei called Lu Yen-Hsun and we took it that Lu was in for a drubbing.

But then Andy started holding the lower half of his right leg, a signal that he was about to lose the match. Andy always holds a part of his body when he's about to lose a match.

And Andy did lose the match, holding the lower half of his right leg as he left the court - proof, if it was required, that professionals shouldn't really be allowed compete in the Olympics.

Eoin Rheinisch, for one, would quite probably have discarded the lower half of his right leg if it meant he'd get over the finishing line faster in the kayaking event.

He had, though, a nervous wait before having his semi-final spot confirmed, following an appeal from the American Scott Parsons, who was banjaxed after receiving a 50-second penalty.

"Parsons was adjudged to have gone through the upstream gate with his head in a downstream direction," explained Abe Jacob, RTE's canoeing expert.

"That sounds awful complicated," said Bill O'Herlihy. Not to mention bloody painful, Bill.

Cory Cogdell, if she'd been on hand, would have put him out of his misery.