TV VIEW:IT'S WITH a heavy heart that such an allegation should even be aired, desperately sad that the thought should even cross anyone's mind, achingly awful that we've been devoured by eyebrow-raising you're-having-a-laugh scepticism. But past experiences have left us somewhat chastened, humongous sporting let-downs making us more than a little wary. World weary. Cynical even. Too afraid to dream, lest we be disappointed all over again.

So, let’s just spit it out, time to be blunt: by yesterday afternoon how could you not wonder if Annalise Murphy has a 250 horsepower outboard engine thingie strapped to the bottom of her Laser Radial vessel – which, presumably, is on the banned equipment list in the sport of sailing?

“She’s leading”, “she’s still leading”, “she’s won – again,” was the gist of Michael Lyster’s updates, and you couldn’t but start feeling blasé about it all ... if a little concerned about the engine issue.

Four races, four wins, but divil a sign of a medal, which doesn’t seem at all right. Usain Bolt got a big goldie one in Beijing, for example, for just 9.69 seconds’ work, but it seems like Annalise has to sail the equivalent of Weymouth-to-Wellington and back again before the Olympic people concede she deserves some bling.

Go on, be honest, how many of you Olé-ed around your living room when you heard she’d won the first of those races, only to learn that there were still 10 to go, the last the final? At which point you deflated your puffed up green, white and gold banana, your cheeks positively sizzling, forced to concede you know as much about sailing as you do about nuclear physics? Morto.

Granted, between journeys from the BBC’s red button and RTE’s live webby streaming thing, as the frantic hunt for live coverage of Annalise hotted up, you ended up seeing not a huge amount, most of the time there was no sign of her at all, probably back indoors blowdrying her hair while others in the same race were still being tossed heavenwards by the waves.

Fortunately enough, she’s a whole heap calmer about this medal-chasing business than the rest of us, “I’m just going to take it one race at a time,” she told RTÉ’s Niall O’Flynn later in the day, in a cool-yer-boots, put-away-your-bananas, I’m-not-even-at-the-half-way-stage-yet-and-so-much-can-happen kind of way.

“I’m just trying to keep my head out of the sky and keep focused,” she said, but she probably didn’t intend it as a barb towards ourselves.

We still, to be honest, don’t know a great deal about this sailing lark, other than it involves water, boats and shouldn’t feature engines, but we’ve learnt one thing: Annalise Murphy is half decent at it.

And Aoife Clark’s a bit useful at this equestrian lark, as is Chloe Magee in the sport of badminton. That’s wimmin for ya, they dominated the day.

Magee’s tussle with Pi Hongya of France was marvellous stuff, and made you wish you saw more of the Raphoe Rocket – okay, we made that up – just a little bit more on our TV screens.

She was beating herself up after her 21-16, 18-21, 14-21 defeat to the former world number two, it was probably there for the taking, but at 23, commentator John O’Donovan reminded us, she now has two Olympic Games under her belt. A veteran, you might say. And a bit like the rest of us, she’ll be four years older (and in her case, wiser) next time around.

As will swimmer Gráinne Murphy whose Olympic Games have been ended by a bout of glandular fever. You kind of wished she had been spared her interview with RTÉ yesterday – “do you think it was a good decision to go to the Games in the first place,” asked Lyster – when her gut-wrenching disappointment was painfully evident, but she’ll be back.

Whether the Russian women’s gymnastics team will ever recover, though, from the tragedy that was their silver medal yesterday, it’s hard to say. Their mascara – which surely should be a banned Olympic substance – and glitter-covered faces took on a waterfallish look as they sobbed uncontrollably when they only finished second, the one who came a cropper on the tumbly floor thing, almost landing on her face, especially distraught. The campaign for the Olympic age limit to be raised to 25 starts here.

Michael Phelps suffered a similar tragedy, only taking silver in his 200 metres butterfly final last night, bringing his Olympic medals’ tally to a meagre enough 18 – equalling the all-time record at that point – before setting a new mark with victory in last night’s 4x200m freestyle relay.

The shame.

“The work wasn’t there,” said RTE’s Nick O’Hare after Phelps missed out on gold in the butterfly by 0.05 of a second.

If only he’d had a 250 horsepower outboard engine thingie strapped to his bottom he’d have been laughing.