Orla Barry takes silver to bring Irish tally to eight medals

Orla Barry has won Ireland's eighth medal of the Paralympics in Rio by claiming silver in the Women's F57 Discus final at the Olympic stadium.

The 26-year-old from Cork recorded her best throw of the final in the third round, 30.06 metres, three metres behind the eventual winner and favourite, Algeria's Nassima Saifi.

Barry had previously won silver at the World Championships in Doha (2015) and gold at the European Championships in Italy earlier this year. Ireland's tally now includes four gold medals, three silver and a bronze. The target before the Games was eight.

Ireland's Ellen Keane followed up her bronze medal-winning swim on Wednesday night by qualifying for the S9 Butterfly final.

Keane finished second in heat two of three, swimming a personal best time of 1.10.96. She will be sixth fastest going into Thursday night’s final. It takes place at 9.41pm, Irish time.

Nicole Turner qualified for her fifth straight final of the Paralympics when finishing fourth in the her heat of the SB6 100 metres Breaststroke. Her start time is 9.50pm, Irish time.

Cork's Patrick O'Leary finished a superb fifth in the Men's KL3 Canoe sprint final. The 43-year-old Irishman won the B final at the World Championships in Duisburg but has made appreciable progress throughout the Paralympics, in the heat, semi-final and now the final.

He was ranked seventh in terms of qualifying times before the race began at the beautiful Lagoa stadium but produced a fine performance. There was a little bit of headwind so there was no chance of a personal best.

“I absolutely delighted. I was saying on Wednesday that I was hoping to knock off one or two and I did. Technically we have been working on a lot of stuff and kind of delighted on that today.

"We had a great cap in Uberlandia, myself and my coach Neil Fleming and it paid off." Tokyo 2020? It'll be hard to beat the surroundings here, as I look up at Christ the Redeemer (statue). We have Europeans and Worlds every year so I'll see how that goes over the next year or two.