MARY HANNIGAN'S OLYMPIC VIEWWHICH one of us hasn't had a day like Svetlana Tsarukaeva had yesterday? Which one of us hasn't failed to snatch 107 kilos in three attempts? Exactly, we've all been there, so we knew precisely how she felt.

We might, though, have stopped short of headbutting the nearest available wall in response to our frustration because that, on the whole, rarely helps the situation, but so broken was Svetlana she probably didn't feel the pain.

Sue Barker reckoned her brush with the wall was accidental, but we beg to differ. We even studied it again on YouTube, where lots of tenderhearted folk left comments along the lines of "Ha, ha, ha."

Svetlana, we suspect, knew what she was doing from the moment the BBC man declared "SHE'S GONE!"

As the favourite in the 63-kilo weightlifting competition her world crumbled when her legs did much the same under the weight of 107 kilos, much like a poorly constructed skyscraper in an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale.

She dissolved into tears, howled in frustration, and nutted the wall. Simple as that.

Hats off to Pak Hyon Suk, though, the North Korean capitalising on Svetlana's woes by cleanly jerking 135 kilos with her final attempt.

"I just kept it in my head that my dear general's eyes would be watching over me, and that encouraged me to lift this weight," she said, sending a big hello to Kim Jong-Il.

"I am overjoyed by the fact that I have brought great joy to our dear leader."

We wondered if, say, Eileen O'Keeffe clean-jerked a medal in the hammer would she send a similar message to Brian Cowen, or is it just a North Korean thing?

Whatever, we salute Pak even if, to be honest, we wouldn't like to meet her down a dark alley.

But we feel that way about all weightlifters - they're generally wider than they are tall and have thighs as broad as the Mississippi.

And weird heads on them too.

But Olympic athletes come in all shapes and sizes. The Chinese gymnast Deng Linlin is 4ft 6ins. The USA basketball star Sylvia Fowles is 6ft 6ins.

"She's a very, very talented player, one for the future, the sky's the limit," said RTÉ's Liam McHale, no shrinking violet himself. But from our vantage point, at six-foot-six the sky isn't the limit, it's only the start of it.

A mixed day, it proved, for the Irish. Gogglegate rumbled on after Melanie Nocher's Olympics were somewhat banjaxed by her having to fiddle with her goggles in the middle of her 200-metre freestyle heat after they filled up with water. They didn't fit right because the Irish swimmers couldn't wear their usual caps because . . . ah here.

Then there was Eoin Rheinisch. Honestly, if you'd told us we'd one day get emotional about a kayaking result we'd have said, much like the YouTube folk, "Ha, ha, ha." But fourth? As Ian Wiley, in the RTÉ commentary box, put it when Togo's Benjamin Boukpeti stole a bronze from our Eoin: "Oh. My. God."

Ian came fifth in Atlanta (1996), Eoin came fourth in Beijing (2008), so, if God is good, we should get a medal in 2020.

Boxing offered a happier tale.

"You don't go into the ring to get beaten up," said Bernard Dunne in advance of John Joe Nevin's bout with Abdelhalim Ourradi of Algeria, and mercifully, the man from Mullingar took him at his word. As did Abdelhalim, in all fairness, after the first round, which ended in a scoreless draw. Seriously, you'd see more punches connect at Bingo of a Friday night.

Fortunately, as it proved, John Joe had less trouble with Abdelhalim than Jimmy Magee had with John Joe, the RTÉ man confusng him with his boxer team-mate John Joe Joyce more than several times.

"This John Joe thing gets on your nerves a bit," said Jimmy when he did it again, adding that John Joe had a record coming out: "I don't know if it's a ballad or rap or something in between."

But is it Nevin or Joyce who's the rappin' balladeer? We were afraid to ask.

"We don't have the name of the Fighting Irish for nothing," said a proud Mick Dowling after Nevin triumphed. "We've always been fighting, whether it be in the pubs or on the streets, we've always been doing it."

Boozy brawling, then, could yet lead to our first medal in Beijing. Damn it, whatever it takes.