Use technology: Irish Olympians

IT was beginning to look like Ireland’s only medals at the Rio Olympics would be confined to the magnificent performance of the O’Donovan brothers.

Yesterday Annalise Murphy put the disappointment of finishing fourth in the London Olympics behind her in sailing to a silver medal in the Women’s Laser Radial. At one point she was even contesting for the gold medal.

Her success was all the more welcome coming on the back of the disappointing results and even suspicions, in relation to the judgements that went against Katie Taylor and Michael Conlon. With modern technology there should be an appeal process in which the boxing decisions could be reviewed by an impartial expert panel. Only hours before the Conlon fight, Vladimir Nikitin, another Russian won the gold medal in the heavyweight division, despite being clearly out-boxed by Vasiliy Levit of Kazakhstan.