The That-Actually-Wasn't-All-That-Bad Blog - Irish at the Olympics: Day 3

The delicious mediocrity of Ireland's opening weekend was ruined by Dubliner Annalise Murphy (left), who had the temerity to go out and actually prove an enormous success. Her two wins in the Laser radial place her at the head of the field, a massive 45 second win coming in the second race. She does, however, have 8 more races to fuck it all up before the medal race arrives, so we shan't get ahead of ourselves. After all, our Star class pair of O'Leary and Burrows exemplified this spirit, conspiring to drop from second to fifth as the controversy around O'Leary continued to rage. Ryan Seaton and Matthew McGovern lie in sixth in the 49er class, while James Espey is presumably being mocked mercilessly by his colleagues, managing a dismal 42nd in his laser class.

Hannah Craig replicated Eoin Rheinisch's success by qualifying through in the canoe slalom; Scott Evans' quest to match Chloe Magee's opening win was decidedly less-impressive, taking a two-set hockeying at the hands of Lin Dan. In Evans' defence, SuperDan is considered the finest badminton player of all time, and Evans definitely isn't. Further heartbreak for the Irishman came in the form of a draw which has somehow landed him in a round-robin group with one other player. And since he has now played everyone else in his group, his first match is also his last.

Our friend Sycerika Mc Mahon (right) had a sycintillating 200m IM heat, breaking her Irish record with a sycwim of  2:14.76. She syceemed pleasyced with it, scytopping for interviews after avoiding the press completely after her 100m breaststroke disycappointment. Syche syctill can't sycpell though...

And finally, the horses. Any hopes of me taking three-day-eventing seriously were well and truly destroyed watching Michael Ryan fall over a little house. He didn't really see the funny side, being disqualified and all, but at least he'll have some company on the way home as Camilla Speirs also had her verticality compromised, taking a tumble through the Rose Garden. That, in fact, is not a euphemism, and considering the fact that she'll probably spend the next fortnight picking thorns out of her jacksie, she's unlikely to be behaving euphemistically in the near future.