Not qualifying is bad, now she’s from Dublin. Has she not suffered enough.

Total rubbish. Other than employing thousands of people with a renowned reputation for breeding its probably the only sport we can genuinely consider ourselves top rank. And you want to cut the funding?

They make enough money with out government funding with the various race meets and the profits from breeding.
did we get any medals from the horse’s in the Olympics no and the last one was doped so it’s isn’t what we’re good at our best athletes at the moment are our boxers who are under funded i.e. Katie Taylor no toilet in her gym, and our sailor they are real athletes.

Ray, I wholly agree that our athletes are not provided with either the facilities or the funding and it’s utterly inadequate on every level. Its wrong to suggest however that this is run at the expense of the supposedly wealthy horseracing industry

Our race racecourses are dilapidated and most race meets actually run at a loss. It would be lunacy to let this run down further by cutting the little funding there is made available, risk thousands of jobs and jeopardise the only sport which we excel at.

Leona Smullen the emerald of our isle!!!

bloody hell!!! as funny as it is constantly bringing up poor Leona think it might be time to give it a rest….. she did win a gold medal after all

Is your name Roy Keane by any chance? Proportionally given our population we do as well as any other nation.

I stick by what I say.
Are you prepared to pay more tax for better sporting facilities to train our kids? Academies etc?
We have 1 real prospect of gold in Katie Taylor and possibly another gold or silver from another boxer. France have 20 times our population and if we bag 1 gold we are well ahead of them.
It is an insult to those Irish athletes to suggest they accept failure.

I have not witnessed 1 Irish athlete yet who hasn’t given it everything.
We had Robert Heffernan came 7th. Why can’t we recognise that as a great achievement?

Sean while I accept that the atheletes all go out to do their best the fact that she see’s finishing 15 meteres behind the winner and she was slower than her best personal times I cant see how she can see this display as a success. If she improved on her personal or season best times then that would be a success. We have to get over the view that we qualify and then enjoy ourselves when we get there.

Totally agree Seamus, we’re better than what we’re showing to be sure.

Exactly, sheesh, I’d say you’re great craic fizi. Are you the best at what you do fizi? Is success everything, or should contentment, happiness and a million other things not come first? Obviously not, I’ll just tie the knot now.

Agree, surely getting a PB would have been her plan or even a SB which she didn’t run either.

Tell your what mark when your even qualify for something I’ll give your opinion some tought until then crawl back under a stone and stay there

you might go yourself next time John. i hear there stuck for a water boy!

It’s a poorish show by the Irish, so far anyway.

No it’s not. Every country specializes in at least 1 sport. Ours is boxing and we have 4 fighters in the quarter finals with 3 likely to win medals. The US has none in the boxing by comparison.

by “the irish” nice faux briticisms there ‘dexter’ youre as irish as the rest of us

We are shit at rugby. We won one grand slam in 60 years and can’t get past the quarter finals of the world cup in a sport with only 9 competitive teams in it, which effectively means that Ireland have been the worst competitive team in the world for the last 60 years.

We have zero chance of winning a world cup in soccer so should we not bother with that also ? They do it cause they love it. It aint all about winning

Padraic: yeah I suppose so you have valid point, but then you could think about that too in regards to football, if these people played for free and loved that – fair enough let them go and play for passion. But they earn astonishing amount of money and if they are not even considered to be able to compete then there is something wrong about it I think ? Same as I don’t see much point running deficit business, same I don’t see much point running sports department that has no results – but just fun. Meet on sunday morning run in park and there you have fun. Ah, never mind me, just bit of a talking, I know nothing will change anywhere :)

Zhanna Pintusevich (UKR)

2001 World Champion 100m
1997 World Champion 200m

DA Molony: yeah glad you quoted these dates beside it too.
Once in million years white wins something OK :)

But she never won Olympics medal.
And what is most important she was on the dope – just a small fact, doesn’t change a lot, does it ? :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BALCO

and look for her name

She was running 400 metres.
I take your point but that is the distance that she is best at. She has overcome many serious injuries and shows integrity and resilience. I am biased as I am her uncle. Thanks for your thoughts. Watch her run in the relays on Friday….

Paul: as I said, my comment was not pointing at Joanne, but it was just a lose thought about running competitions in general. Like the white people are doomed to fail, you cannot beat genetics I’m afraid.

All the best for her – by all means, I’m sure she gave absolute 200%, but that was the whole point, no matter how hard you try you simply can’t win them African origin athletes. Thanks, good night.

@ fizi, it’s unclear to me what you mean by never winning a major run. If you’re solely referring to the Olyimpics, then I agree, the pickings are indeed slim. However, Sonia O’ Sullivan did win a silver medal in the 2000 Olympics, in the 5000 race. She also won gold in the 1995 world championships in the 5000 race, and gold in the European Championships in 1994 for the 3000 race, and gold in 1998, during the 5000 and 10,000 races. She has won more than these impressive examples, that I have used for illustrative purposes only. To my eyes, that’s an impressive amount of winning, that should serve to inspire, rather than deter, our pale faced up and coming youngsters to compete.

A Russian runner won her 400m Semi-final today.

Imagine someone gave Sonia O’Sullivan this genius piece of advice when she was starting out.

Or Gabriela Czabo, Jeremy Wariner, Konstantinos Kenteris, Svetlana Masterkova, Yuri Borazovskiy, Stefano Baldini, Nils Schuman, Irina Privalova etc etc etc.

Did you only start watching track and field yesterday or something?

Defeatism attitude. To quote a legend – “How does a kid from Coos Bay, with one leg longer than the other win races?”
Steve Prefontaine
Set the 5000 meter record at the ’72 Olympics which still stands today 40 years on.

And he had another leg shorter than the other. Amazing man.

Fizi, I assume you are either trolling or you have only started watching athletics yesterday. I could think of loads of successful white track athletes from just The UK and Ireland off the top of my head. Sonia (ex-world champion), Cram, Ovett, Coe, Gunnell, Delaney, Treacy? And that’s just a quick list.

Not forgetting there was a double amputee running in the 400 metres yesterday.

One name – Michael Behan

You were badly proved wrong with this comment with that white American guy beating all the Africans into second place behind a British guy that happens to be black in the 10,000 meters last night!

Serge: LOL and in todays final she was 6th :) Wanna say anything more ? :)

True. Only Irish competitors missed out on medals. Everybody else from every other country who competed got a medal. Wonderful Olympics. Everybody got a medal?

You fool.

Give it a rest n