That’s it for today, the Paralympics are well and truly under way. And Friday will be an even busier one for the Irish team, 11 of our athletes in action. Among them will be swimmer Ellen Keane, who will be defending the gold medal she won in Tokyo in the SB8 100m breaststroke, while Katie-George Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal, already weighed down by medals, will be looking for yet another one in the 1,000m Time Trial. Good evening everyone, thanks for your company.
Tiny Margins: Look how close Roísín Ní Riain was to that bronze. But yes, yes, that’s sport. She was in second in the final’s earliest stages, dropping to fifth at 50m, but put in a surge in the final lap when she closed in on Uzbekistan’s Muslima Odilova. Not to be, but she’ll take plenty of confidence from that display when she goes in to her next three events.
S13 100m Butterfly Final: Ah, the agony of it - Roísín Ní Riain has finished fourth in her final. Italy’s Carlotta Gilli took gold, the United States’ Grace Nuhfer silver and Uzbekistan’s Muslima Odilova bronze.
S13 100m Butterfly Final: Next up, it’s Roísín Ní Riain, the pride of Drombanna, Co Limerick. And we’re going to go in to podium-expectation-tempering mode again - no more than Nicole Turner in the 50m Freestyle, this isn’t Ní Riain’s top event.... although she still managed to win silver in it at this year’s European Championships and last year’s World Championships. So, in truth, we have absolutely no clue what to expect here.
Archery: Earlier today, Kerri Leonard scored a season’s best of 662 to finish 21st out of the 28 competitors in the ranking round of the Individual Compound event. That put her through to the last 16 elimination round where she will take on China’s Jiamin Zhou, a double gold medallist at Rio 2016, tomorrow morning. Oznur Cure Girdi of Turkey set a new world record with 704 points, finishing a point clear of India’s Sheetal Devi.
S6 50m Freestyle Final: It’s a sixth place finish for Nicole Turner. China’s Yuyan Jiang takes gold, with a new Paralympic record, the United States’ Ellie Marks silver and Ukraine’s Anna Hontar bronze.
S6 50m Freestyle Final: It’s nearly Nicole Turner time. Now, we’re going to temper your podium expectations a bit here - this isn’t her favoured event, that’s the 50m Butterfly in which she won silver in Tokyo and will be taking on again in Paris. So, as they say in the trade, any shade of medal here would be a beautiful bonus. A top five finish might be a more realistic expectation .... but you just never know with Nicole Turner.
Mentality Monster: Look who turned up at the badminton at the Paralympics today - none other than Jurgen Klopp. He’s looking well rested too, and not stressed out about preparing Liverpool for their intimidating trip to Old Trafford on Sunday to take on the mighty Manchester United. (Stop laughing at the back).
S13 100m Butterfly Final: And this is the line-up for Roísín Ní Riain’s final. Like Turner, she was the fifth fastest in the heats so is also in lane two. The United States’ Grace Nuhfer, Italy’s Carlotta Gilli, the world record holder, and Uzbekistan’s Muslima Odilova have the plum lanes after registering the fastest times in the heats.
S6 50m Freestyle Final: This is the line-up for Nicole Turner’s final. China’s Yuyan Jiang, the United States’ Ellie Marks and Ukraine’s Anna Hontar, the world record holder, were the three fastest swimmers in the heats, with Turner fifth quickest - which is why she has the less than favourable lane two.
Hello again everyone, we’re back for the not insignificant matter of two finals featuring Irish swimmers, Laois’s Nicole Turner in the S6 50m Freestyle (6.19) and Limerick’s Roísín Ní Riain in the S13 100m Butterfly (7.15). Not a bad start to the 2024 Paralympics, eh?
That’s all for now, time to walk the dog. We’ll be back around 5.30 for the build up to Nicole Turner and Roísín Ní Riain’s swimming finals - Turner is up at 6:19 and Ní Riain at 7.15. See you then.
Archery: After 42 of the 72 arrows shot, Ireland’s Kerrie Leonard is 22nd out of the 28 competitors with a score of 380. India’s Sheetal Devi leads the way on 408.
Cycling: Drat, Damien Vereker and Mitchell McLaughlin have fallen out of the top four, so there’ll be no bronze medal race for them. Britain’s Stephen Bate and Christopher Latham set a new world record in heat seven.
Cycling: Woah, an excellent performance from Damien Vereker and Mitchell McLaughlin in qualifying for the B4 4000m Individual Pursuit, their personal best time of 4:14.817 the third fastest so far with two heats to go. But - and it’s a big one - there are some quality riders to come, including world record holder Tristan Bangma of the Netherlands. If Vereker and McLaughlin can stay in the top four, they’ll go through to this afternoon’s bronze medal race.
Cycling: Martin Gordon and Eoin Mullen have dropped out of the top four in qualifying for the B4 4000m Individual Pursuit, so that’s the end of their hopes of contesting one of this afternoon’s medal races. Damien Vereker and his pilot Mitchell McLaughlin are up next at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome in heat six.
Cycling: Martin Gordon and his pilot Eoin Mullen are top of the standings after their B4 4000m Individual Pursuit heat, finishing in a time of 5:27.642. There are still six more heats to come, though, so early days. Damien Vereker and his pilot Mitchell McLaughlin are out in heat six.
Cycling: From 12.41 we have two Irish teams to cheer on in the qualifying stages of the B4 4000m Individual Pursuit - Sligo’s Martin Gordon and his pilot, Galway’s Eoin Mullen, and Kilkenny’s Damien Vereker and his pilot, Donegal’s Mitchell McLaughlin.
There are eight heats in all, with the two fastest pairs going in to the gold medal race this afternoon (4.13), with the next two quickest racing for bronze (3.59).
Gordon and Mullen are up against Britain’s Neil Fachie and Matthew Rotherham in the second heat, while Vereker and McLaughlin are out in heat six, their opponents Alexandre Lloveras and Joann Paillot of France.
Cycling: Richael Timothy ended up in seventh in C1-3 3000m individual pursuit qualifying, China’s Xiaomei Wang and Britain’s Daphne Schrager with the fastest times, both breaking the world record, so they’ll meet in this afternoon’s gold medal race, while Germany’s Maike Hauseberger and Switzerland’s Flurina Rigling will battle it out for bronze.
Cycling: It wasn’t to be for Richael Timothy in the C1-3 3000m individual pursuit, her personal best of 4:05.247 leaving her fifth out of the 10 competitors with two to go, so she won’t be going through to the medal races. A measure of the quality of the field is that the world record has been broken twice - first by Germany’s Maike Hauseberger (3:49.444) and then by China’s Xiaomei Wang (3:44:660).
Timothy has three more events to go, though, the track time trial on Saturday, the road time trial next Wednesday before she finishes up with the road race on Saturday week.
Cycling: Brilliant from Richael Timothy, she set a new personal best of 4:05.247 in C1-3 3000m individual pursuit qualifying and with just four more competitors to come she has the third fastest time.
Coming up: The next two Irish competitors in action are cyclist Richael Timothy (from 11.55am) and archer Kerrie Leonard (from 12.0).
For fear of being bombarded by incensed emails from Galway/Roscommon folk who both claim her as their own ….. she’s from the Galway side of Ballymoe, but played Gaelic football for Roscommon …. henceforth we shall refer to Timothy as a Connacht woman.
Just like in Tokyo, she will compete in four events - the 3000m individual pursuit and 500m time trial in the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome, and, outdoors, the time trial and road race.
She gets going in the C1-3 3000m individual pursuit this morning when she will be up against China’s Qian Wangwei, who won just the four gold medals at the Track World Championships in March.
The two fastest cyclists out of the 10 competitors will go through to this afternoon’s final, while the third and fourth quickest will go in to the bronze medal race.
Much to Leonard’s dismay, the Meath woman is Ireland’s only para archer, but she’s hoping if she can build on her ninth place finish in Tokyo, she might encourage a few more to take up the sport. She opens her campaign at midday in the ranking round of the Individual Compound event.
Swimming: Well, that was a very decent morning’s work by Nicole Turner, Dearbhaile Brady and Roísín Ní Riain. Turner and Ní Riain are through to this evening’s finals, while 17-year-old Brady swam a personal best on her Paralympic debut - and only missed out on the final by two places.
Turner and Ní Riain were both the fifth fastest in their events, so they’ll need to improve on their times if they’re going to make the podium. A reminder, though: these aren’t their strongest events, there are more medal chances to come after this evening.
These are the times you need to be sitting in front of your TVs later today:
6:19: Swimming - Nicole Turner in the S6 50m Freestyle final
7.15: Swimming - Roísín Ní Riain in the S13 100m Butterfly final
Gordon Manning, our man in Paris, reports on this morning’s events in the pool:
[ Róisín Ní Riain and Nicole Turner move through to finals in ParisOpens in new window ]
Roísín Ní Riain: “It was a good swim to get started with and nice to kick off, I’ve been raring to go. It was a bit of fun getting out there this morning, happy, and back tonight so that’s a good start.
I guess I’ll have to go back and have a look with my coach, sit down and see how it went, but happy with it for my first swim.
The goal this morning was always just to make it back tonight. We’ll get a bit of rest and recovery now and see how it goes tonight.”
Róisín Ní Riain: We have another swimming finalist! Ní Riain finished fourth in her heat with the fifth fastest time from the two heats. She’ll be back in the pool at 7.15 this evening.
Róisín Ní Riain: The 19-year-old from Limerick, competing in her second Paralympics, is up next for Ireland in her S13 100m Butterfly heat. She will take a mountain of confidence in to these Games after her very brilliant outing at April’s European Championships when she won two golds, two silvers and a bronze - including a silver in today’s event.
Again, the eight fastest swimmers from the two heats will go through to this evening’s final (7.15), Ní Riain in heat two, which includes world record holder Carlotta Gilli of Italy.
Nicole Turner is through to the final (6.19 this evening)!
She finished third in her heat in a time of 35.35, the fifth fastest out of the two heats. Dearbhaile Brady came fifth, in a time of 36.45, and just misses out on the final - she had the 10th fastest time in the heats, but only the top eight make the final. China’s Yuyan Jiang set a new Paralympic record of 32.70 in the first heat.
Up first: Swimmers Nicole Turner and Dearbhaile Brady get us under way in the S6 50m Freestyle heats which start at 9.43am. They’re both in the second heat with the eight fastest swimmers from the two going through to this evening’s final (6.19).
The Gods weren’t particularly kind when they placed the Irish pair in a heat that includes ….. deep breath …. China’s Zhang Li, who already has six Paralympic gold medals to her name; Ukraine’s Anna Hontar, the world record holder at this distance; the United States’ Ellie Marks, who won gold in the S6 100m backstroke in Tokyo; and Switzerland’s Nora Meister, another 2021 medalist, winning bronze in the S6 400m freestyle.
But - and it’s a sizeable one - Turner and Brady are a bit useful themselves. Turner, a silver medallist in Tokyo in the 50m butterfly, won joint gold in the 50m freestyle, today’s event, in April’s European Championships, with Brady, who is just 17, taking bronze. It should be a fast heat too, with the quality of that line-up, so hopefully the Laois and Derry women can do enough to get themselves through to that final.
Irish in action: It’s a busy Day One for the Irish team, nine of them getting down to business - five in cycling, three in swimming and one in archery. By midday, five of them will have made their 2024 Paralympic bows, swimmers Nicole Turner, Dearbhaile Brady and Róisín Ní Riain, cyclist Richael Timothy and archer Kerrie Leonard.
(Our auto-correct, incidentally, keeps insisting, a bit crankily, that Richael should be Rachael, but it’s stumped when it tries to find an alternative to Dearbhaile).
From 12.41 we have two pairs in the qualifying phase of cycling’s B4 4000m Individual Pursuit, Martin Gordon and Eoin Mullen, who go in heat two, and Damien Vereker and Mitchell McLaughlin, who are in heat six.
If the Gods are on our side, our swimmers and cyclists will progress to their finals later in the day. Light yer candles.
From 9.43am: Dearbhaile Brady and Nicole Turner (Swimming - S6 50m Freestyle, heat two)
From 10:11am: Róisín Ní Riain (Swimming - S13 100m Butterfly, heat two)
From 11.55am: Richael Timothy (Cycling - C1-3 3000m Individual Pursuit, qualifying)
From 12.0: Kerrie Leonard (Archery - W2 Individual Compound Open, ranking round)
From 12:41: Martin Gordon and Eoin Mullen (Cycling - B4 4000m Individual Pursuit, qualifying)
From 12:41: Damien Vereker and Mitchell McLaughlin (Cycling - B4 4000m Individual Pursuit, qualifying)
Top of the matin, everyone. Paris has barely got its breath back after hosting the Olympics, but here the city goes again, home to another festival of sport: the 17th Summer Paralympic Games.
Today is the first of 11 days of action, during which 4,400 athletes from 182 nations - plus the Refugee Paralympic Team and the Neutral Paralympic Athletes (ie ‘approved’ Russian and Belarusian athletes) - will compete across 22 sports. RTÉ2 and Channel 4 are your host channels.
Ireland has sent a 35-strong team to France and its members will feature in cycling (10), swimming (six), athletics (five), triathlon (five), equestrian (four), rowing (two), archery (one), powerlifting (one) and table tennis (one).
Our very own Muireann Duffy introduces you to each member of the team here, one that includes a string of Paralympic debutantes, as well as a sprinkling of veterans - none more seasoned than swimmer Ellen Keane. This is her fifth (fifth!) Paralympics..… and she’s only twenty-nine. Gordon Manning spoke to her before she set off for Paris, you can read that chat here.
Up next, we’ll have a guide to the Irish in action on day one.
