McCarthy fifth in discus final

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Niamh McCarthy finished fifth in the F41 discus final after throwing 28.94 metres in her final round.

The Cork woman, who took silver in the event at Rio, had been in the medal positions early on in the final but on a day of exceptional performances she couldn't quite find the edge.

Defending champion Roaua Tlili, of Tunisia, set a new world record of 37.91m to take gold ahead of Morocco's Youssra Karim (37:35m) whose teammate Hayat El Garaa took bronze with 29:30.

"I’m happy with my performance," McCarthy said afterwards.

"I know other people were expecting better things but it’s been a very hard few years so just to make it here and to have a few good throws I’m happy with that.

"My PB is over 30m and I’m a way’s off my season best. If you just look at the result you’d be thinking if I did slightly nearer to it I could have got a medal but I don’t think I could have done more today, I did as best as I could.

"Had the Games gone ahead last year I wouldn’t have been in them. I’ve been trying for years to get back to where I used to be so it’s been a difficult time. I’ve changed as a person. That’s not to say that those strengths aren’t in there but they’re not with me right now in the quantity that I’d like so I’m happy to just have made it to this competition.

"It was touch-and-go so I’m really proud of myself."

Tuesday Aug 31st

Orla Comerford was the sole member of Team Ireland to compete at the Olympic Stadium yesterday as she competed in the 3rd heat of the T13 100m. Orla faced a very strong field and new that to qualify she would need to break her personal best. She crossed the link in 4th position with a time of 12.87 which meant that she did not progress to the finals this evening. However, speaking after the race she revealed the difficulties that she has head whilst preparing for today’s event;

“Today the goal unfortunately wasn’t time and progressing through, it was when I got on the plane to Tokyo, and it was, in our opinion, a very realistic and achievable goal to be making that final and being competitive in it. You know, the expectation for this games have shifted an number of times this year with injury and we’ve had to adapt to those changes and unfortunately one of them came on the last day of training camp in Narita where I sustained a small tear in my quad so for me the last couple of weeks have been all about being in a position where I could go out and line up on the track, I knew there was no way that I could be realistically competitive and pushing for the times I would have expected from myself a month ago so, unfortunately, that was the reality today so the goal after that happened was to line up, to be there, to race, to cross the finish line and to be honest I wasn’t even sure that would happen.”

“Lining up was incredibly important for me with losing my coach, Brian Corcoran, two weeks ago. I saw him the day I left and I know that he was incredibly proud of me being here and being on the plane so for me it was about lining up and being there and I think he was with me every step of the way. To his family who have been so incredibly strong and so incredibly kind, I’m sure this has been an incredibly difficult time for them, it’s been a very difficult time for all of us, it was really hard being here by myself, I was lonely not being at home with the Raheny Shamrocks gang and his family and everything like that but I know that, at the end of the day, this is where he wanted me to be, he told me as much and so mu goal was to be out there and, while I knew I couldn’t make him proud with the times and the performance I hoped that he would be proud of my resilience and my drive to be out there on the starting line.”

See Paralympics.ie for more.

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