Sonia's Silver

Manach

G'wan Ireland

Bard

One of our company directors, a Cork man, is her cousin... as I'm sure half of Cork 'is' at the moment

Ireland's first medal in the Y2K Olympics Fair play, Sonia... nice one!

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Bard
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-me-

Stephen

afaik she's the first Irishwoman to ever win a medal in any Olympic track-and-field event.

Take it

People never remeber who comes second!

TwoShedsJackson

Congrats to her and all, but my God the coverage on RTE News was embarrassing. They had dragged out her coach and guidance counsellor (!) from when she was in school, and they started $hiteing on about how great she was when she was 14 and all.

Kudos to her, no mistake, but trust RTE to make a balls of the coverage.

gandalf

You think that was bad Castor. Did you see the interview or should I say interrogation that that O'Helihey fool gave her last night. They must have grilled her for at least 20 minutes and even Sonias patented grinny smile was wearing thin by the end of it. I didn't watch it all as I turned over to the BBC to watch their coverage and turned back to RTE every now and then.

I mean the sports comentators on RTE are nearly making the TV3 Football one looks good (and that is really saying something....)

Gandalf.

D-Generate

Jaysus its getting tireing now the amount of coverage. In the evening echo they had 10 pages on her comeing 2nd. Who remembers who came second.


I fear we will become worse than the Brits if we win a gold.

Jak

... I doubt we have much to worry about so.

ButcherOfNog

aye but has she been using drugs? imo she hasn't.

it was obvious that michelle debruin was at the time she won her medals, but many would not admit it even thought it was staring them in the face that she must have. any thoughts?

Jak

The majority of them are on some form of drugs. The masking techniques involved are advancing at the same pace as those used to scan for them. Granted some events are less prone to drug taking than others ... but as an example of the variety, consider that many of those involved in the Marksmanship events take a chemical which lowers heart rate and muscle activity, thereby allowing them to remain perfectly still while aiming.

The difference is, most use the drugs during the training phases and then begin masking in the run up to events (in fact many of the drugs tests simply look for the masking agents). The drugs aren't always run of the mill anabolics, but can be a wide range of chemicals designed to limit downtime when training at high intensities etc.

I've been training seriously for about 5 years and take a range of supplements to help me train at a decent level 5 times a week. None Banned by the IOC mind. The reason i take supplements is because heavy training can leave you run down and generally tired meaning I can't work or train as well as i should.

This is for an amateur. For an Olympic athlete, the competition is far greater and the need to train consistently at their physical limits is everpresent. In many cases, the legal supplements just aren't enough. Consider the cyclists who use EPO. When injecting this, they run the risk of death, as if a single air bubble is injected into the vein .. it will eventually burst and likely kill them. If they are willing to take this risk to win a medal, dyou not think they might take the risk of getting caught?

JAK.

ps- On another note, Even the Golden boy Carl lewis (who now retired, speaks openly against drugs in sports) has failed a couple of tests while competing in US national T&F events.


[This message has been edited by Jak (edited 28-09-2000).]