Race is on to bring back gold treasure

ATHLETICS:Thanks to Bethany Firth Ireland has got off to a golden start and now hopes are high, writes MALACHY CLERKIN

IT WAS the width of a wheel-rim and nothing more, yet as teatime approached here yesterday it felt like everything. Colin Lynch, the mohawked amputee cyclist with the Canadian burr and the Irish parentage, led for every single metre of his 3km individual pursuit bronze medal race – apart from the last one.

He was just over a second up on France’s Laurent Thirionet after 1,000m, had stretched it to more than two seconds after 2,000m and looked at that stage like all he had to do was stay upright and Ireland would have their first medal of the 2012 Paralympic Games.

Pursuit cycling is a slow and steady kind of water torture if you are a spectator. It’s the kind of sport you can’t really watch with the naked eye. You know the way TV comedies make out the crowds at tennis matches turn their heads on a constant pivot from side to side? Well if they were to do it with a pursuit crowd, the pivot would be down and up, down and up. Down at the cyclists on the track, up at the screen above it for the split time.

Particularly so in the final kilometre of a race where the margin is a rapidly dwindling second and the cyclist in front is carrying the hope of a country’s first medal on his back. Two seconds became 1.4, which became 0.8, which became 0.3 with one lap of the track left to go. And at the end? We’ll let Lynch sum it up.

“I thought I had enough of a gap on him to hold him off,” he said. “I crossed the line and heard the gun go off and thought it was for me. But it was just for him. There’s not much you can say to make it better.”

Until Bethany Firth came along and all kinds of heaven broke loose in the pool last night, it was the near misses such as Lynch’s that were starting to become an unwanted theme of the games.

Squeak by squeak, they were loading an extra lead weight or two into the saddlebag for today. Because ever since the schedules were drawn up, today is the day that Paralympics Ireland have had circled in the calendar. They were calling it Super Saturday long before Mo Farah and friends colonised it.

Firth took the bare look off the medals table with her stunning gold in the 100m backstroke, setting up very possibly the best weekend in the history of Irish Paralympics.

In the space of 90 minutes in the Olympic Stadium tonight, both Jason Smyth and Michael McKillop have the chance to retain the first of the gold medals they won in Beijing four years ago. All going to plan, Gorey swimmer Darragh McDonald ought to have taken a medal by then in the 400m freestyle. If the day ends with any fewer than three more medals, or if at least two of them aren’t gold, then it will be time to start worrying.

Lynch’s experience shows how tough it is to win a medal, says Paralympics Ireland chief executive Liam Harbison, after he had come up just 0.12 of a second short. “Anyone who saw that race would have just gone, ‘Jesus Christ, this is incredible.’ If anyone thought Paralympic medals were easy to come by, you got your answer there.

“It’s classic racing. I feel sad for the guy because he was world champion just three months ago. These guys are in multiple events so they can hopefully pull it back at some stage over the coming week. But that’s sport, you know? It comes down to tiny margins.”

If past performance is any nod to future returns, the margins in the stadium tonight ought not to be all that tiny. Smyth’s best time in the 100m is three-quarters of a second faster than that of anyone else in the field and anything less than a reasonably comfortable gold will be an unsatisfactory night’s work.

For all the garlands he earned for coming so close to qualifying for the Olympics earlier this year, the bald truth is that he really should have been able to find the 0.06 of second that he needed from somewhere.

His best time of 10.24 came in his second race of the season and he never improved on it. He tightened up as the season went on and was never able to put a full race together.

For someone of his ability, his level of funding and the quality of coaching he’s had, it was a pretty unconscionable failure. Tonight is the time to put it right.

“I really think Jason could do something special,” said Harbison. “He’s well ahead of his competition. I think he wants to go out and make a big statement. He wants to show the world how fast a Paralympian can run. He wants to say, ‘I may not have made it to the Olympics but look what is possible.’ Some of the work he’s been doing in training is incredible and there’s a chance he could do something extraordinary . . . The only thing I’d say is that it’s quite cold here in the evenings and that might go against him slightly.

“Michael’s the same. He’s really going out there to show himself to the world. He won the 800m in Beijing in 1:59 – he’ll more than likely run somewhere in the region of 1:54 . . . The guys in his race, their PBs are around two minutes.

“Michael has to go out and control the race and if he does that, he’ll be fine. But look, it’s sport. It can slip away quite easily.”

McDonald is another with huge possibilities today. He won silver in Beijing at just 14 and has followed it up with medals every year since. His competition in today’s 400m freestyle will come from the defending champion, 46-year-old Swede Anders Olsson.

The gap has narrowed between them since 2008 and the season’s best time of 4:55 that Olsson is bringing here with him is around what McDonald has been doing in training. Now he has to bring it into the pool with him.

If he does, Harbison and his staff can let themselves breathe out. They know well that these games can’t all be about educating and changing perceptions and the wholesome, worthy stuff. The winning has to come too.

There is funding to be justified, room at an ever-more crowded table to fight for. The two closest calls so far have been Lynch yesterday, and James Brown and Damien Shaw on Thursday – on both occasions Harbison had either Leo Varadkar or Michael Ring sitting next to him.

He doesn’t need to be told how important a return on all his work is. Saturday had better be super indeed. “It’s a big day,” he says. “The work is done and we can do no more. All we can do is get them ready and put them out there. It’s up to them now.”

Feeling ever so slightly twitchy, so? “To be honest, I nearly need you to come back to me on Monday to see how I am.”

HERE'S WHO WE ARE PINNING OUR HOPES ON IN THE WATER AND ON THE TRACK

JASON SMYTH

Athletics

T13 100m final, 7.15pm

The official Paralympic website usually has one of two faces front and centre when you click on to the Athletics page during these games – Oscar Pistorius and Jason Smyth. Needs to back up his gold medals and world records from Beijing to make up for missing out on the Olympics earlier this year.

Has the speed, has the cockiness, should have the rest of the field running for second place.

MICHAEL McKILLOP

Athletics

T37 800m final, 8.58pm

Was the first man ever to break a world record in the Olympic Stadium in a test event last year. As it happens, the 800m isn't an event he particularly enjoys and, if it wasn't for the fact that he has a title to defend here, he wouldn't have a huge amount of interest in it.

But the simple fact is that he Is easily the fastest man in the field, with none of his competitors ever having broken two minutes.

DARRAGH McDONALD

Swimming

S6 400m Freestyle, 9.49am

He was a boy four years ago and he's pretty much still a boy now. Eighteen years old and already aiming at his second successive Paralympic medal, having taken silver in this event in Beijing. He and Sweden's Anders Olsson are in separate heats and ought to win them both, pitting the pair against each other in the final at 5.40 this evening. If McDonald can reverse the Beijing placings with the 46-year-old, he should have his first gold medal.