THIS time the rain stayed away and the upshot was that, along with President Robinson and triple gold medallist Michelle Smith, a large crowd of well wishers turned up to welcome home The Irish Paralympics team at Dublin airport yesterday.

Leading the team to their meeting with the President was its most successful member, Bridie Lynch from Lifford in Donegal, whose gold in the discus made her the star of the Irish party while her bronze in the shot meant that she was the only one of the travelling party's nine medal winners to make it on to the podium twice.

Lynch has made steady progress since taking a bronze at her first European championships in 1983 but it was her link up last year with new coach Eamonn Harvey, to which she attributes her considerable improvement in recent months, which led in turn to the success in Atlanta.

"I was very well prepared this time, really focused, but I met up with him last October and that made more difference to me than anything else," said Lynch, who extended her personal best in the discus by seven metres during her preparations for these Games.

The 31-year-old said that the support of the Irish-American community in Atlanta had been a great help and while tales of organisational mayhem abounded, Lynch played the problems down remarking that "you're there to compete and so, whatever is going on around you, you just get on with it."

For Lynch and all of her teammates there were emotional reunions with family and friends but for some of the competitors, including Joan Salmon from Clonskeagh in Dublin there was also a welcoming face wash from Emma, her Alsation guidedog.

Salmon won bronze in the dressage and she may yet be followed across the Atlantic by her medal winning partner PJ.

All of the competitors had to choose their horses from a central pool and Salmon struck up such a strong relationship with PJ, the first horse she tried out, that his American owner has offered to give him to the Dubliner if she can arrange the necessary funds to get him to his new home.

The location of the equestrian events combined with the scheduling of competition and lack of facilities for riders meant that Salmon had to travel 200 miles a day between the village and the centre.

The drive back seemed even longer than usual after the first day of competition when she finished just outside the medals in fourth place but her spirits were raised last Thursday when her bronze medal winning performance caused the crowd to break with tradition by giving her a standing ovation after which the Dubliner, who was competing against sighted riders, found herself at the centre of a scramble for autographs.

"The whole thing was a bit strange beforehand because the people who were helping me had to travel out there before finding out whether they would get accreditation but in the end it all worked out very well and I was thrilled with the medal," she said.

Silver medallist David Malone looked comfortable with the attention his success in the pool was bringing but the 18-year-old student was waiting for a quiet moment so that he might find out from his family how his Leaving Certificate had gone.

Those sort of considerations are well behind Mick Cunningham. The 41-year-old from Sutton, having just returned from his seemed - with some justification - to feel that he had been cheated out of a table tennis medal.

"I got to the quarter-finals where I played a fellow from Chinese Taipei who used an illegal bat when he beat me. I looked at it beforehand and all through the match something wasn't quite right but it wasn't until afterwards that I complained and they did nothing about it," said Cunningham.

In fact, his rival was discovered to have breached the rules on two counts but rather than disqualify him the officials simply made him change the bat for his semifinal in which he was roundly beaten.

Survivors of the July Olympics will be glad to know that the Atlanta transport system has lost none of its charm. "Every race we went to the driver got lost," said wheelchair sprinter, John Fulham, fifth in the 100 metres.

Collette O'Reilly from Longford was delighted with a personal best in the 400 metres. She was critical of the food - which seems to have been mostly muffins - and of the hilly terrain, which sapped the arms of wheelchair athletes like her. But like most people on the team, she had thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Corkman John L Sullivan was happy too, after his Paralympics debut. Given his name, it was disappointing to find he wasn't a boxer. He is in fact a sailor, who shrugged off the amputation of a leg last year to be one of Ireland's three-man team at Lake Lanier.

His biggest complaint about the Olympics was that the winds were so light: "At home, we wouldn't have bothered to go out in the conditions."