FOURTH OF NATURE
Ni Riain touched out of medals
RÓISÍN Ní RIAIN brought her the curtain down on her Paris 2024 Paralympic Games with a fourth-place finish in the women’s 100m Breaststroke SB13 Final last night.
Ní Riain started the race quickest, taking off the blocks first, and she continued to battle through the water throughout the race taking the first 50-metres out strongly.
Battle
Colleen Young and Ní Riain were locked in a battle for third, with the pair touching the wall at the same time.
But it was the American who was able to dig deepest down the stretch to take bronze, 0.6 of a second ahead of Ni Riain who took her second fourthplace finish of the Games to accompany silver and bronze.
Britain’s Rebecca Redfern — fastest of the morning qualifiers — showed her class by taking gold in 1:16.02.
Drombanna woman Ní Riain couldn’t hide her anguish at missing out on a third podium of the tournament after finishing in a time of 1:19.16.
“I’m disappointed, I’m not going to lie but you have good swims and bad swims,” said Ní Riain afterwards.
“I hope I’ll be able to look back in a bit and be happy with my performances but disappointed with that.
“I probably got a bit too excited, definitely didn’t hit some of the things I needed to but it’s all learning.
“Coming here and getting two medals is definitely something I wanted so I’m happy with that.
“Of course, that’s not what I’m thinking about right now, but I’ll be able to look back and be happy with that.
Capable
“I always have high expectations of myself and I’m capable of more than that there.
“For vision-impaired kids to be able to see people like them is really nice, I definitely would have liked to have had that when I was younger.”