4*400 ladies were great, what race were you watching?

Stupid comment….”who cares where he came” maybe the Irish tax payers! He is useless and shouldnt be there, neither should any of the rest of the losers that were given a free holiday…with the exception of the boxers and heffernan. he will be worse than 57th in 4 yrs but will get another free holiday and celebrated for being useless. Only in Ireland!!!!

7 Billion???

And that is standard training for every other athlete it’s doing that bit extra that will help ya do better than the rest of the field which should be cheered and rewarded

Yes and no – at some stage you have to reward only success. But before you get to that point, you have to encourage kids to try sport, enjoy it and not to give up because they are made to feel like losers from an early age, because they didn’t get one of the top 3 places.

The problem is with the PE program in schools, kids never see a shotput, javelin or high jump mat. never try handball, volleyball ect. the list goes on

Agreed, Gerard; I went to St. Fintans Primary school and then St. Fintans Secondary – we only ever played basketball and soccer during PE – that was it. We messed around with a parachute a few times in primary, and there was 1 relay race in secondary. Seriously – the lack of variety was shocking.

“Speed” ? He came 57th and will have another all expenses paid luxury holiday in 5 yrs. Great job! Im entering it myself next time.

John, with all your bitching and moaning can i ask have you ever run a marathon?

If you did (which i doubt) can I ask did you even do it in under 2:30…no? thought not, you haven’t a clue what your talking about.

He came 57th, that puts him ahead of a good few billion people including your lazy, complaining ass.

Your nothing but another couch potato critic,

So everyone should take part and everyone should be given a medal with such a small pot of money to be spent the Irish should pick there sports they are going to do well in

number of marathons has nothing to.do with it, its all about qualifying times…..which he had. we he had.

I find it amusing that so many couch potato critics are so quick to judge so many athletes but yet they know nothing of the work, pain and training involved

In 1984 John Treacy came 2nd in the Olympic marathon in Los Angeles, this is generally regarded as Ireland’s greatest ever Olympic achievement considering the level of competition he faced. This was John Treacy’s FIRST marathon. The fact that Mark Kennealy had only run two marathons prior to this is a non issue.

You clearly have no understanding of how qualifications for the Olympics work,
Yet another couch potato critic,

john, you,re a fool

I think John is correc just look at the facilities provided to the boxers compared to the athletes and the boxing has always been a sport to provide medals and they get the same as the athletes something not right there

Yes let’s celebrate failure. Under achievement is to be lauded and provided for financially, courtesy of the State. Perhaps if we set the bar low enough we’ll be able to get over it!

by your logic because Ireland hasn’t won the world cup we shouldn’t bother,

you know your right…….let’s only support anyone if the win outright, feck it…why even bother with a team its only a waste of money.

Ireland winning the world cup is totally separate matter I’m not blaming the the athletes the boxers have got their s;#*t together why can’t the athletes one example is the GB teams MO farrah he moved his whole family to a different country to train with the best and look what he achieved in the 10000 and 5000 is it the athletic association is it the way there training or who they are training with is it the meets their entering what is it or are we just happy with the excuse ah sure we are competing against the best didnt we do well to get there that’s not the mentality the boxers have

That gave me a headache, Gavin.

“LAURA REYNOLDS HAS expressed her satisfaction after finishing 20th in the women’s 20km walk today, saying she was “absolutely delighted” with the outcome.”

I bet laura is already looking forward to her next free holiday also. What an attitude.

Ya well Tom listening to all these so called athletes saying they are delighted finishing nowhere and saying they are looking forward to the next Olympics is a joke if they didn’t finish in the top ten they should be dropped from the team

Gavin – he was referring to your lack of punctuation – you typed one big long rambling sentence without a full stop at the end.

I’ll try remember my full stops in future