Cosmo Kramer

Officially our Best. Olympics. Ever!

I couldn't even watch it, listened to the commentary out on the stairs with the door open. That man is a hero. .

https://www.thetimes.com/article/ba70b93d-3f46-4e6b-ac7f-99abcaf28149?shareToken=2733d21dac98aa3a6e5743a6d26ef645 The Moorhouse situation all starting to make sense now. More to come I'm sure. The French guaranteed a set number of medals before the games I suspect.

https://www.medalspercapita.com/#medals-per-capita:2024 One medal table we're performing particularly well on. After a day of both glory and frustration, easy to forget that we're doing really well for a country of our size this year. Fingers crossed for Rhys tomorrow.

No, no expectations for them to get out of their heats. But Favors barely clearing 19m, Jodie McCann that far off her best, Coscoran being run out the back of his heat, let's not pretend those were good performances.

Some very poor Irish performances in athletics on day 1. Obviously need to realistic about where most of our athletes stand at this level of competition, but too many a long, long way off their own best on the big day.

We can probably start the boxing inquest now, as I think the outcome from here for KH will relate more to Harrington herself (as well as any judges/referees) than the team performance. Nine out of ten gone, eight without winning a fight, only two made a quarter and just the one medal. Moorhouse can be put down entirely to a home town decision, so no issue there, Marley gave his all and also leaves with credit in the bank. Gallagher boxed well too. The rest though weren't great. O'Rourke I think should have got the decision, but underperformed all the same. The Walshes just seemed happy to be there, Clancy and Lehane weren't up to much either. Maybe the inquest will be unnecessary if boxing itself isn't coming back. But definitely issues to be looked at that go beyond just the judging I think, if it is to continue.

A clear round would, of course, have won us a medal. On the bright side, it's boxing up next...

That would have been an improvement on what actually happened.

Fourth going into the last round in the jumping. Need a clear round and a bit of luck.

Coyle clear in the jumping.

One round for each rider. We are sixth after everyone's first round. Eight teams realistically with a chance out of the 10.

Bad start for the showjumpers anyway. Flashbacks to Liam Jegou there.

They didn't really deserve it though. They messed the start and then started taking risks they didn't need to take, when a clean, sensible middle of the field race would have been fine. We'll get nowhere as a country making excuses for poor performance on the big day. On that note, I watched an interview with Jon Rudd, where he was talking about the high performance goals in Irish swimming. Before the games I thought it was an unnecessary burden to require our swimmers to swim their qualifying times at big events, when other sports and other swim teams would accept the times at any event. But he changed my mind on it by pointing out that it got competitors into the mindset of performing on the big day. Shane Ryan didn't get the 50 free time on the big day so wasn't allowed to compete in the event at the games. Fannon did and therefore was, and he swam two PBs in the Olympics. That's the difference. This is the exception in Irish sport though, there's been far too much "happy to be there" stuff again this week. We should be happy to win, or if that's impossible at least be happy that we performed to our best when it mattered. We often don't though, and that's why I was amazed at all the journos buying into the 9,10,11 medals stuff ahead of the games. That was never on, my prediction was six, right now I'd say we might get to seven, but we are absolutely leaving medals behind us again unnecessarily this year.

One of the best performances we've ever had from an Irish team in an Olympic final, followed an hour later by one of the worst. Based on their three goes at the medal race across the last two days the only thing I can say, from my admittedly limited sailing knowledge, is that I have absolutely no idea how those two got into a medal position to begin with. Desperately poor again there.

Never in doubt really, don't think I've ever been as relaxed watching an Ireland entry in an Olympic final, even three years ago was tighter than that I'm sure. An Irish medal a day for five straight days, including two gold. Unprecedented. The question now is can we get another today in either sailing or showjumping?

Yeah "resources" was probably not the right word there. "Efforts" might have been better. There's no reason, in principle, why someone from Portland Row couldn't be every bit as good a cyclist or a swimmer as someone from rural Sligo or somewhere in Armagh. We just need to continue to steadily build.the facilities and get the programmes in place to give people easy access to them, and not just the people that can easily afford it. The situation with boxing might resolve itself anyway in terms of it being removed from the games after everything that's been going on this week.

No complaints with this one, it's no problem when they're beaten fair and square. The Tajik boxer is too good for Marley. That concludes our involvement in the men's boxing. Week 2 looking an awful lot quieter than week 1 for us in general, other than the athletics there are some very quiet days from an Irish point of view.

Tatjana Smith retires at 27. There will always be others coming through of course, but one less at least for McSharry to battle with going forward.

Great effort from Fannon, 2NRs and 10th overall in the 50 free, unlucky not to make the final but he could do no more.

Kazakh, Polish, Azeri, Canadian and a "neutral" judge I think. But it wasn't about where they were from, it was about where they were. Even the French girl knew she lost that. The fact that the next Olympics are in the US is probably the only thing that might keep boxing on the programme. But we really need to be focusing our resources elsewhere. Get the velodrome built for starters.

No surprise with Moorhouse, she'd have had to have put her on the floor to get the decision there.

Yes, getting close. Personally I'd consider London to be out best up to now - 6 medals including a gold - as the medals were won by six different people across three sports. So seven medals including the gold we have already won, or six medals with two golds would surpass it. We've already covered three sports in our medal wins this time as well. It's hard to see us not doing that from here - gold for the lightweights looks more likely than not at this point and Wiffen will likely medal at least once more in these games. So that alone would get us to six including at least 2 golds, with multiple chances to add further to that as well, and hopefully win in a record fourth different sport. The dream scenario would be to better both the total medals from London and the total golds from Atlanta. That remains very possible, but not near as certain as the other target.

Sailing called off for the day. Means there will be five finals for Ireland tomorrow - potentially six in the event Fannon makes the 50 free final.

Ah sailing, don't ever stop being the most frustrating sport to watch in the Olympics.* *Apart from possibly boxing...