Athletics
The Irish women’s 4x400m relay team finished a heartbreaking fourth in the Olympic final in Paris, despite running a new national record.
The magnificent foursome had already made history when they stepped on the track by being the first Irish female relay team to contest an Olympic final, before confirming their world-class status with their sensational performance.
Knocking just shy of three seconds off their national record set in June when they won silver at the Europeans, the Irish quartet all ran the race of their lives, and were agonisingly just 0.18 behind the bronze medallists Britain on the line.
Becker led the team off, splitting exactly what she did in the heat (50.90 seconds) to set the team up perfectly. Adeleke, just over 24 hours after placing fourth in the individual 400m, unleashed her killer speed down the back straight of her leg when she had the baton in hand, moving the team up to second and splitting sub 49-seconds.
A phenomenal effort from Phil Healy kept the team in contention, before Sharlene Mawdsley anchored the team brilliantly on the final leg. The Tipperary star ran her fastest ever relay split (49.14 seconds) but was just run out of the medals by Dutch runner Femke Bol, and Amber Anning of Great Britain who was fifth in the individual 400m final last night.
The race was won by the USA in a time of 3:15.27, with individual gold medallist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone running a phenomenal 47:71 second leg. Netherlands took sliver in a new national record of 3:19.50, just 0.22 seconds ahead of Great Britain in bronze; who also clocked a national record to be barely a metre ahead of Ireland at the finish.
Golf
There was a positive finish to the Olympics event for Stephanie Meadow and Leona Maguire on Saturday, as both golfers carded under-par rounds at Le Golf National on Saturday. Despite a difficult start to the week, Meadow played some solid golf over the last two rounds and followed up her 72 on Friday to shoot a two-under-par round of 70, including five birdies. It left the 32-year-old on six-over overall and 39th overall at Paris 2024. Lydia Ko won the gold medal, winning by two shots over Germany’s Esther Henseleit, Lin Xiyu was third for China.
