Day 5 Of The Olympic Games And Rio 2016 Is In Full Swing

Day 5 Of The Olympic Games

It’s day 5 of the Olympic Games and Rio 2016 is now in full swing , we will have plenty of action from Irish Athletes today including Sanita Puspure, Annalise Murphy and David Oliver Joyce.

The three day eventing team finish up their campaign with showjumping, whilst others face elimination if they don’t produce the performances of their lives.

Ireland’s three-day eventers are eighth overall heading into the last day of competition. They were fifth after the dressage, but Padraig McCarthy’s fall on the cross country course saw them slip back a little.

They all jump for the team position, with the top 25 riders overall then jumping for the individual prize. Mark Kyle is the best of the Irish in 16th.

In other Irish Olympic News;

In Rowing’ Co.Cork mother of two Sanita Puspure cruised into the quarter-final round with a second-place finish in her heats. Puspure made light work of the heavy weather on day one of the regatta at the Lagoa and fitted in a tough training session afterwards because she felt she didn’t get enough of a workout in the race.

Irish Sailor Annalise Murphy ended the day in fourth place, but was later bumped up to third in the overall standings after China’s Xu Lijia was disqualified from race 2 for an infringement. Murphy won the first and finished 13th in the second to leave herself in good shape. It’s a long week’s racing and consistency will be rewarded – she has two more races today.

In Other Sailing news, Finn Lynch finished respectable 14th and 28th in his two races to lie 21st overall. Finn is the youngest on the Irish sailing team at just 20 years of age and is using the Rio 2016 Games as a stepping stone to train for Tokyo 2020.

In Swimming and onto Shane Ryan’s favoured discipline the 100m backstroke, Shane made it as far as the semi-final round. Over the coming days, starting today, he goes in two freestyle – or front crawl – sprints. First up is the 100m – on paper his heat doesn’t look particularly fast so this may hamper his chances of advancing.

In Boxing captain Paddy Barnes was eliminated on Monday, and Irish boxing at the games is in need of real a pick-up. If David Oliver Joyce wins it will be a serious boost – he’s taking on number two seed Albert Selimov. Joyce looked assured beating Andrique Allisop of the Seychelles in the first round to earn his first Olympic win at the age of 29.

The Irish Hockey Team must be reeling at the moment following back-to-back defeats on the opening days of the Games. They were battling 3-2 losers against India, but clinical Netherlands put them away 5-0 on Sunday.

It doesn’t get much easier against Germany, ranked third in the world (Holland are second), but they need to start picking up points if they want to be one of the four teams in Pool B to advance to the quarter-finals.