Kearney looks to the positives

Ireland’s Lisa Kearney was in upbeat mood this afternoon despite her agonising loss in her last 16 Olympics clash at the Excel Arena.

Ireland's only judo representative lost earlier today in the 48kg division to China's Shugen Wu in a sudden-death "golden score" after levelling the bout late on.

"I'm really disappointed I lost my contest," she said. "It was a pretty close fight, there wasn't much in it.

"When it went in the golden score I felt like I had started to gain some momentum, and started to build pressure, but unfortunately I just got caught.

"That's judo, you know? It only takes one second to either throw or be thrown.

"She's quite a defensive sort of a player so she's very difficult to throw, I felt I did need to be aggressive and try and maybe build pressure and get her penalised.

She added: "I'm really disappointed I've lost of course, but there's a lot of good things that I can take from my performance today and certainly some things I can go away and work on for the future.

"I think the whole experience will be of massive benefit to me. I'll be able to build on this for my future career."

She said later: “I performed well, but I am just 23 and this is the start of things to come.

“It was really good experience and I hope to compete in the 2016 Olympics and the ones after that.”