Here's a recap of how the Irish competitors did on day seven at the Rio Olympics
By Will Downing, Rio
Day Seven of the Olympic Games produced even more history from an Irish point of view, with the medals table reached finally at the end of the opening week.
It was a pair of colourful siblings from West Cork that produced Irish glory, and put a sixth sport into the Irish Olympic medals hall of fame.
Ireland scooped their first ever Olympics rowing medal thanks to the gallant O’Donovan brothers from Skibbereen.
Gary and Paul won silver in the men’s Lightweight Double Sculls at the Estadio Lagoa near Ipanema, being pipped by world champions France.
It’s Ireland’s 30th all-time Olympic Games medal.
The women’s equivalent saw Sinead Lynch and Claire Lambe finish in a creditable sixth place.
Sanita Puspure also comprehensively won her placement semi-final in the single sculls, having lost out in the quarter-finals.
West Waterford’s Seamus Power has been showing composure beyond his years in the Olympic golf. A cracking four-under par round of 67 has elevated the 29-year-old to joint ninth overall on four-under, six shots behind the Australian leader Marcus Fraser.
Padraig Harrington shot a level-par round of 71 to keep him one under for the tournament in 22nd position.
Annalise Murphy has lost the lead in the women’s Laser Radial.
At one stage lying 28th and last in Race 7, Murphy surged back to take 17th place, and this allied with a 12th place finish in Race 8 has her now in third place, fourteen points behind Danish leader Anne-Marie Rindom.
Netherlands’ Marit Bouwmeester is in the silver medal position, four points ahead of Murphy.
Finn Lynch now lies 29th in the men’s Laser after placing 33rd and 30th in today’s races.
Ireland are in a strong position after the opening day of the women’s 49er FX and men’s 49er.
Andrea Brewster and Saskia Tidey are fifth overall in the women’s 49er FX after finished eighth and third at their first two attempts.
Matt McGovern and Ryan Seaton in the men’s 49er lie fifth after the opening day. They were 14th in Race 1, but improved massively to finish second in Race 2 behind New Zealand, who are currently in the gold medal position.
Ciara Mageean and Mark English are through to the semi-finals of the women’s 1500m and men’s 800m respectively after comfortable performances on the Engenhão Olympic Stadium track.
Mageean was second in her heat, and English third.
Alex Wright came home 46th in the men’s 20k walk, and will compete in next week’s 50k event alongside 2013 world champion Rob Heffernan and Brendan Boyce.
The biggest shock saw the 22-year-old women’s 10000m world record of 29:31.78 set by Wang Junxia in 1993 was obliterated by Ethiopia’s Almaz Ayana to claim the first athletics gold of Rio 2016.
Ayana, running the distance for only the second time in her career, took over 14 seconds off Wang’s discredited mark with an astonishing time of 29 minutes, 17.46 seconds.
At one stage, Ayana was half a minute inside the world record.
The biggest disappointment though was the sparse crowds for the opening day of the athletics. A tiny audience showed up for the morning session, and only around 10,000 were in the stadium for the opening race of the evening programme.
Judy Reynolds has qualified for the individual Dressage Grand Prix Freestyle on Monday, having booked her spot in the final relatively early in the competition.
Reynolds is the first Irishwoman to qualify for an Olympic dressage final.
Ireland bowed out of the Olympic men’s hockey with a 3-2 defeat at the hands of Argentina in Deodoro tonight, sending the Green Machine out of the competition.
Despite goals from John Jermyn and Shane O’Donoghue, Argentine penalty corners saw them knock the Irish out.
Scott Evans scored his first victory over Germany’s Marc Zwiebler in nine attempts as the Irishman claimed a win in his badminton round-robin opener.
Evans’ margin of victory was 9-21 21-12 21-7.
Chloe Magee’s outing against Karin Schnasse of Germany was delayed until 2am Irish time due to long-running earlier encounters.
