Mixed fortunes on Day 1

It was a busy opening day for the Irish and there was a mixture of good and disappointing results for the 18 competitors.

The Eventing team started their day early in Hong Kong competing in the Dressage section. Three members from the team of five competed today and it was a disappointing day. Austin O'Connor was the best of the Irish ending the day in 26th position, Louise Lyons and Geoffrey Curran finished in 35th and 38th position respectively, Ireland lie 9th in the team competition. Lucinda Fredericks representing Australia currently leads the individual competition and with three of the top five riders being Australian, they lead the team event.

Derek Burnett did not live up to expectations in the Men's Trap finishing the first day of qualifying in 15th place out of 32. Derek's first round was almost perfect missing only one of his 25 targets but subsequent rounds of 22 and 23 leave him needing a near flawless final two rounds if he is to make the six man final.

Siobhan Byrne lost her opening bout in the Women’s Individual Sabre 15-8 against Irena Wieckowska. Byrne fell behind early but staged a comeback halfway through the contest, she came within 3 points but that was a close as she could get. Siobhan later blamed her lack of competition this year leaving her ill-prepared for Beijing and hopefully this experience will help her in the future.

There was one win and one loss for the badminton players as Scott Evans lost and Chloe Magee won their first round matches. Evans lost by the narrowest of margins to Germany's Mark Zwiebler 21-19 in the final set, Evans found himself in a winning position but was eventually beaten by the man ranked sixth in Europe. Scott felt he was very unlucky not to win and indeed he was but he is still young and will has a long career ahead of him. Chloe Magee won her match which was just as close as Evans', Chloe also won 21-19 in the final set against a girl much higher ranked than herself.

Andrew Bree started his Olympics with the Men’s 100m breaststroke in what he saw as a warm up for his stronger event the 200 breaststroke. Bree finished in 2nd place in his heat and set a new Irish record, this was not good enough to finish in the top 16 but Andrew felt happy with his performance and all bodes well for his next race on Tuesday.

Tim Goodbody started his sailing campaign in the Finn class and took part in the first two of his 11 scheduled races, Tim finished in 22nd and 13th place in the two races and lies in 20th position after day 1.

The Irish Men's Four finished in third position in their heat behind Australia and Germany and qualifies directly to the semi-finals. It was a good result considering this was the first competitive race these four have been together and their performances are bound to get even better as the week goes on.

In the Men's Road race there was disappointing results for Nicholas Roche and Philip Deignan finishing 64th and 81st respectively in a race where riders dropped like flies and only 90 remained. Roche had hoped to finish in the top 50 but later admitted that the race was nothing like he expected.

The first of Ireland's impressive boxing squad was in action today, Kenneth Egan won his first round match very easily destroying Julius Jackson of the Virgin Islands in the light-heavyweight first round winning 22-2. Egan went 6-0 up in the first round with some hard hitting. But Jackson made it a tighter affair in the second as Egan hit the ground after a big shot.
The Irish team captain came back strong and again kept his opponent's score blank in the next round, the Dubliner adding eight points. The fourth round was a formality, Egan finished strongly to win by 20 points. He has a week until his next fight and his draw now seems easier with a few results going his way and he will be confident of getting a medal now.