Cork still going for gold

There is still a possiblity of a Cork athlete returning with a gold medal from this year's Olympics with three athletes still to compete. On Friday Andrzej Jezierski, who is originally from Poland but is now living in Ballincollig, will compete in Heat 1 of the men's canoe single 200m race at 9.51am and if he qualifies from this, he will move on the semi-final which takes place later that morning at 11.30am.

Furthermore Marian Heffernan, wife of long-distance walker Rob will compete in the 4X400m relay race on Friday evening at 7.10pm alongside Jessie Barr, Joanne Cuddihy and Michelle Carey. Marian will run the first leg of the Round 1 race. The final takes place on Saturday night.

Marian's husband Rob was full of high spirits after finishing in ninth place in the 20k walk last Saturday and sets himself up nicely for the 50k walk, his preferred distance of the two. The race will start at 9am.

It has been somewhat of a disappointing Olympics for Cork athlete so far with Derval O'Rourke failing to qualify for the 100m hurdles after she finished in fifth place in the semi-final while Macroom man Ciaran Ó Lionáird was devastated to crash out of the Olympics in the first round of the 1500m race, finishing second last in seventh place. Cork sailor Peter O'Leary and his racing partner David Burrows finished in tenth place in the medal race in the Star class, a week after the controversy over alleged betting involving O'Leary broke.

Moving away from Cork based athletes yesterday was a historic day in Irish sport when Katie Taylor moved one step closer to achieving her dream of winning Olympic gold when she won her semi-final clash on a score-line of 17-9. The Bray girl was far better than Tajikistan's Mavzuna Chorieva and she will walk away from the games with a silver medal at the very least. She now faces Russian number two seed Sofya Ochigava in a repeat of this years World Championships final, a match which Katie won, with the winner taking Olympic gold. 

Cian O'Connor won a surprise bronze medal with his horse Blue Lloyd 12 in the individual show-jumping final. It was the first of Team Ireland's medals with all other outcomes yet to be decided. O'Connor only made the final cut yesterday morning after a Swedish competitor withdrew from the competition. He knocked the final fence in the jump-off against Gerco Schroder of the Netherlands who took silver as a result.

Boxers Michael Conlon and John Joe Nevin have also secured a bronze medal at the very least for Ireland in their respective weight divisions. Nevin will box world champion Lazaro Alvarez Estrada in the bantam-weight division semi-final on Friday afternoon at 2pm while Conlon will box Cuba's Ramirez Cairazana in the fly-weight semi-final on Friday night at 8.45pm.

At the time of going to press the outcome of paddy Barnes' fight was unknown. He was fighting for a place in the semi-final of the men's fly-weight which will take place on Friday afternoon at 1.30pm.