Local competitors go for glory at Paralympics

Excitement is building around Offaly as local competitors Mark Rohan and Fran Meehan prepare to go for gold at the Paralympics in London over the coming days. Killurin's Fran Meehan, a cyclist who acts as the pilot partnering partially-sighted Dubliner Catherine Walsh in the track and road race tandem cycling events. The pair begin the games with the Individual 1km Time Trial B today (Friday) at 9am in the Olympics Velodrome. During a hectic schedule of competition, they will also be in action in Individual Pursuit B Qualifiers on Sunday, September 2, at 10am and the Individual Pursuit B Finals on the same day at 2.40pm. On Wednesday, September 5, attention turns to the Individual Time Trial B contest at Brands Hatch from 2.30pm and the Individual Road Race B on day 10 of the games, Saturday, September 8, at 10.30am. Meanwhile, paracyclist Mark Rohan (31) from Ballinahown village begins his bid for glory on Wednesday, September 5, with the Handcycling Time Trial Event at 2.30pm, followed two days later by the challenging Road Race from 10.30 at the Brands Hatch venue. Offalians can keep up-to-date with how the competition is going for the athletes via free live broadcasts by Setanta Sports in association with Allianz. Viewers in Ireland can watch all the action on UPC channel 105 and Sky channel 423. The coverage on the Setanta Ireland channel on satellite will be unencrypted so all viewers in Sky homes will have free access to the channel. Setanta player is also available in homes with eircom broadband, meaning approximately 1.3 million viewers will be able to watch the action as it happens in the games. Disappointingly, however, the competitions with Offaly interest will not be part of the live coverage. However, sports fans will be able to catch up on their action on a highlights package broadcast on the sports channel each evening or on package programmes on Channel 4, RTE1 and BBC NI. Alternatively, there will live streaming of some events at http://www.paralympics.ie/live/