From Noel O'Reilly in Sydney

26/10/00: Two gold medals led to an outpouring of emotion from the Irish team on a staggering day of success in Sydney. Mairéad Berry struck first, smashing the 100m freestyle world record in the process, a little under two hours before Johnny Cronin and Margaret Grant teamed up for gold in the boccia pairs.

Berry’s golden moment came early this evening, reversing the order of yesterday's 50m backstroke final where she won a silver medal by beating Spaniard Sara Carracelas into second place in the final of the 100m freestyle event.

She had promised yesterday she would be prospecting for gold today and kept her word in some style. Another large crowd in the Sydney Aquatic Centre saw the 25-year-old woman from Coolock in Dublin confirm her world number one ranking by slicing eight seconds off the world record with a time of 2:43.67 seconds.

The result, and the time, simply blew Berry away. "It’s great, I can’t really believe I won," she managed through the tears. "I thought she had me on the turn," she said. "I was concentrating so hard on my own race I didn’t even know I’d won ‘till I looked up."

Berry had nearly seven seconds to realise, Carrecalas’ time of 3:00.49 good enough for silver with Virginia Hernadez of Mexico taking bronze.

Berry was awarded her medal in time to make it to the boccia arena, where Johnny Cronin and Margaret Grant overcame the Spanish duo of Yolanda Martin and Santiago Pesquera in final the pairs competition. The Irish double act, ranked fifth in the world, had to come from behind to secure a 5-2 win and left the arena to riotous applause.

Without detracting from Grant’s performance, rarely has a gold been so deserved as Cronin’s. The pairs captain had said he never wanted to play boccia again on Tuesday night after suffering the bitter disappointing of losing out in the singles bronze medal play-off.

But he bounced back, took the initiative once again and dug deep to drag the team to victory. "We did it," he roared, coming off the court accept the hugs and congratulations of his teammates, most of whom were in tears.

Grant was just as happy. "There are no words to describe it," she said. "I’m just totally in shock."

"I was nervous out there, but even when we were behind I was confident. I just said ‘you can reach inside yourself and do it, as long as you keep enjoying the game.’ We just kept the game going, kept focused and did it."

In truth it was a poor final, the standard of play suffering from both teams obvious nerves. But it was no less exciting, the Spaniards going 2-0 ahead before a magical piece of play in the third end from Cronin put Ireland 3-2 up with just one end to play.

Cronin and Grant held on, extending their lead with two late points when the Spanish were already beaten, to claim Ireland’s fourth gold medal of the Games, the sixth in total. There will be the chance of more tomorrow, the biggest hopes lying in the pool. Berry is hoping for her third medal in the 50m freestyle whilst David Malone is a favoured in the 100m backstroke.