Heffernan walking on air for the road to Rio

THERE was no medal but Robert Heffernan’s heroic fourth place performance in the 50k walk at the Olympic Games on Saturday will rank among the greatest Irish athletic performances of all time.

Victory went to Russia’s Sergey Kardyapkin in a new Olympic record, 3:35:59, with a string of personal best performances behind.

Robert Heffernan’s 3:37:16 was more than seven minutes inside his Irish record (3:45:30) and it would have been good enough to win every Olympic 50k up to Beijing four years ago where drug cheat Alex Schwazer set the Olympic record at 3:37:09.