Paris 2024: Silver lining for steely Róisín Ní Ríain

The thing that struck you most listening to Róisín Ní Ríain after her first final of the Paris Games – a fourth place finish in the 100m butterfly – was her composure.

The Limerick woman is in the habit of winning. Her major championship debut at the 2021 Europeans was marked with a podium place, and the needle has been pointing only one way since.

She alone accounted for nearly half of Ireland's 12 medals at the European Championships earlier this year and having thrown her lot in four events for the Games, she represented one of Team Ireland’s biggest medal hopes.

So when she finished just outside the podium places, the suspicion among the Irish media scrum huddled in the bowels of La Defense Arena was that the 19-year-old would be bitterly disappointed, similar to Nicole Turner earlier that evening after her sixth-place finish in her 50m freestyle final.

Yet she strode over with a purpose, a smile on her face, speaking freely about her performance and the foundations it would give her for the remainder of her races.

But was she not a little upset to find herself outside the medals?

"It’s my first event of every championship, it’s just an enjoyable one for me," she insisted. "I get to go out and have a first swim and hopefully I’ll build on that for the rest of the week."

There was a steely determination and you walked away confident she could deliver less than 24 hours later.

The backstroke is her preferred event and while the imperious Gia Pergolini yet again demonstrated her strength in the discipline, Ní Ríain looked at her ease as she ripped through the water to hold off the challenge of Italy’s Carlo Gilli, who took gold in the butterfly final yesterday.

The tricolour rises alongside the flags of the United States and