Olympic races...Fri 3rd & Sat 4th Aug 2012

Fri 3rd Aug...Following on from Joanne Cuddihy's success earlier in the day when she qualified for the semi-finals, the next Irish athlete in action was Ciarán Ó Lionáird in the third heat of the 1500m. With an ongoing achilles injury, Ciarán was always in a race against time to be fully fit for this race and in the end, he finished in 3:48.35......well outside what he could run if he was fully fit. (Olympic A standard was 3:35.5.....3:48.35 is 4:05/mile pace)

In the womens 10k final, Fionnuala Britton finished in a time of 31:46.71, the fourth European home. This was down on the 31:29.22 she ran in late April and was outside the A standard of 31:45. The race was dominated by African runners with Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia retaining her Olympic title.

Sat 4th Aug.....In the womens 3,000m Steeplechase, Stephanie Reilly went out in the second heat after finishing in 9th place in 9:44.77. This was just under two seconds slower than her personal best time of 9:42.91 set in New York in 2011. It was also within one second of the time she ran in Helsinki recently at the European Championships. (Olympic A standard is 9:43)

 ..In the mens 20km race walk, Rob Heffernan finished in 9th place in 1:20:18. Four years ago in the Beijing Olympics, he ran 1:20:36 when he finished in 8th place. Rob's time was over two minutes inside the A standard of 1:22:30. Rob is up next in the 50k race which is his stronger event.

From Rob on Twitter....."Thanks so much for all the support hope. I did everyone proud I gave it a good lash. Crowds were unreal."

In a post race interview, Rob said............"It was a hard race. I knew the Russians and Chinese are so powerful and so fast. It was always going to be a big burn-up over the last 5k. I had to go from hard to gun to tape, just stay positive with it and see what happened and hopefully other people would drop off. I wasn’t far off top five to be honest."

...Ongoing....