At the canoe slalom Michaela Corcoran in the women’s C1 placed 21st overall and did not advance to the semi-finals, while Kildare paddler Noel Hendrick did enough over the course of his two runs in the K1 to advance to Thursday’s semi-final, ranked 19th.
The Irish women’s rugby sevens team concluded their first ever Olympic Games with an eighth place finish overall after they were beaten by France and Great Britain in the placing matches today.
Competing in their second Olympic Games together the Irish sailing crew of Robert Dickson and Seán Waddilove placed 4th, 13th and 9th in races 7, 8 & 9 respectively of the Men’s Skiff, to remain in second overall in the fleet qualifying series, with three races to go before the top ten for the medal race is determined.
Olympic debutant Rachael Darragh was beaten 2-1 in her opening badminton group match by Jenjira Stadelmann of Switzerland this afternoon.
Team Ireland golfers Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy featured at the press conference today at Le Golf National, where they will both compete in the Men’s Individual Stroke Play, which gets underway on Thursday (1st Aug). More below.
CANOE SLALOM
In his debut Olympic Games 26-year-old Noel Hendrick successfully advanced to the Men’s K1 semi-final, clinching the 19th of 20 available places. Moving quickly through the first half of the course in run one, Hendrick picked up a number of penalties for touching gates as he raced towards the line, adding an additional 10 seconds to his run time. Even with these penalties, the Kildare man was still within the top 20 boats.
On his second run down the course, Hendrick improved massively staying clean through the middle section, only gaining one penalty for clipping the fifth gate to book his Olympic semi-final place on Thursday, where a top 12 finish will be needed to make the final.
Hendrick, who is coached by 2008 Beijing Olympian Eoin Rheinisch, gave this take on his day: “It was a really tough day, I think I’ve been struggling the last few weeks with being very safe and not taking risks in my runs and I think all I wanted to do today was go out and try to attack and race my fastest. I think in my first run I really achieved that but I took too many penalties and it was a really difficult build to the second run.
“I guessed that I had to improve, I didn’t know for sure, but when I was in the start pool of the second run all I could hear was the commentators saying that I needed to improve my time and that was really tough mentally, but I performed well. I had a spin out and a touch in the middle of the run and I just knew from that point onwards I had to perform, I had to put down the fastest run that I possibly could so it was freeing in a way, but also I just attacked all the way to the bottom and I’m really pleased.”
Earlier Michaela Corcoran; daughter of double Olympian Mike Corcoran, and twin sister of Madison who raced at these Games on Saturday, placed 21st overall in the women’s C1 and did not advance to the semi-finals. In her first run, Corcoran clipped five gates resulting in a ten second penalty similar to Noel Hendricks first run.
In her second opportunity to push her ranking up, Corcoran started well going out hard whilst keeping a good line and staying clean only knocking the eleventh gate. However all became undone on the penultimate gate; Corcoran narrowly missed the downstream gate landing her with a 50 second penalty which saw her finish in 21st place, ruling her out of contention for tomorrow’s semi-final.
WOMEN’S RUGBY SEVENS
Ireland Women’s Sevens have finished their maiden Olympic campaign in eighth place after suffering defeats to France and Great Britain on the final day of rugby Sevens action at Stade de France.
Allan Temple-Jones’ side will take huge pride from their debut at the Games, as they made their long-awaited appearance at Paris 2024, but back-to-back placing match defeats on Tuesday ultimately means they leave disappointed.
They came out the wrong side of a tight tussle with hosts France 19-7 in the fifth place play-off semi-final, and then later in the day were beaten 28-12 by Great Britain to finish eighth overall.
Megan Burns’ first half try had kept Ireland in the contest but Great Britain were clinical in possession and scored a couple of quickfire tries to pull clear. There was a memorable moment for late replacement, Claire Boles, however.Having replaced the injured Béibhinn Parsons in the squad, Boles came off the bench against Great Britain to score a late try and become an Olympian alongside her 13 team-mates, including Amy Larn, who was also a late injury replacement for captain Lucy Rock.
Speaking afterwards, Head Coach Temple-Jones reflected: “It was a disappointing finish to the Olympics for us but the overall feeling is pride because it has been an incredible journey with this group. Playing in front of so many people at the Stade de France is unbelievable for us and we’ve got to learn from that now moving forward.
“It was our first Olympics and we’ve got to use this experience now to grow as a squad and grow the depth within our group. Exposing young players to an Olympics like this and in a stadium like this is going to be a real strength for us going forward into next season and beyond. We hope our players grow from this and we’re back in Los Angeles in four years’ time.”
Tuesday’s action concludes the Rugby Sevens competitions at Paris 2024, with Ireland Men finishing sixth in their second Games and Ireland Women finishing eighth on their debut appearance. The gold medal match in the Women’s competition will be contested by
SAILING
Team Ireland’s Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove continued their strong form today in Marseilles, completing the seventh, eighth and ninth races in the Men’s Skiff event. The Dublin pair are holding second position overall, behind Spain, in the fleet racing series, following a consistent string of performances across all three races in very tricky wind today.
Standings in the Men’s Skiff have tightened considerably after today’s difficult wind conditions. Few crews, with the exception of the new overall leaders Spain, escaped unscathed. The Dublin duo’s standout result of the day was their fourth-place finish in race seven, while they placed thirteenth and ninth in races eight and nine respectively.
Dickson (Howth Yacht Club) and Waddilove (Skerries Sailing Club) will contest the final three of the twelve races in the series tomorrow. All 20 teams have now incurred significant discard results so the remaining three races will be crucial.
The top ten boats of the twenty competing will go forward to Thursday’s medal race final but only the leaders are likely to be in contention.
Commenting on the performances today Robert Dickson said: “I’m feeling pretty good. It was very tricky conditions So we’re happy to get away with the results we did. The wind was off the mountain coming from the left and the right and is very unpredictable and really wavy gusty we’re happy with how we managed it.
“I think a day like that you just need to remember that everyone’s going to have – apart from the Spanish – most people are going have ups and downs. You just have to be able to stay cool, and even if the race isn’t go on your way you just need to keep looking and see what you can next.”
Seán Waddilove added: “I feel the same as I did at the beginning of the week; I think our process is to just take it race by race and not get too emotional with everything which seems to be working.
“I think the best way to stay on the results card up at the top end is to stay pretty neutral; you can’t get too happy about things and you can’t get too disappointed about things either, especially on a day like today that has massive up and downs in the fleet.”
BADMINTON
Despite a brilliant start to her Olympic badminton debut, Donegal’s Rachael Darragh was left to rue the way it finished, losing a three-game thriller 21-13, 22-24, 15-21. Darragh showed absolutely no signs of nerves on centre-court in the final game of the session in La Chapelle Arena against Switzerland’s 2023 European Games bronze medallist Janira Stadelmann, wrapping up the first game 21-13 in 20 minutes.
However the 26-year-old from Raphoe went seven points down (7-14) in the second and had to really dig in. She saved a game point at 20-21 and then had a match point herself before losing a nail-biting second set 22-24 which the crowd really got behind.
Darragh had the edge for most of an equally tense third, leading 8-5 and always holding a lead of a point or two until Stadelmann tied it for a fifth time at 15-all but then Thai-born Swiss player clinically closed it out, winning the last six points in-a-row.
“I gave a good performance but I’m also very annoyed at the way it finished,” Darragh said.
“She slowed the game down at the end and I made too many easy mistakes. I had my chances in the second but maybe I was thinking a little too much about winning.
“I’m really proud of parts of my game but really disappointed with others, like my discipline and just thinking too far ahead. When you get that close you start thinking about all the wrong things but that comes with time and experience. I did not expect to be playing alone, on centre-court, but it was amazing, I love big arenas like this which can fit 8,000 people.”
Like her teammate Nhat Nguyen the Ulster star faces the toughest of challenges in her second and final group game tomorrow up against Spain’s Carolina Marin; a three-time world champion who is seeded fourth here in Paris.
Darragh said: “She was the Rio Olympic champion, she’s here for gold but I have nothing to lose. There’s so much from today I can use tomorrow so I can really go for it.”
