Hero's Welcomes For NI Olympic Medal-Winners

Belfast's Olympic medal-winning boxers Paddy Barnes and Michael Conlan will arrive home to a hero's welcome today.

They will unveil their bronze medals at Titanic Belfast at 5.30pm today and tomorrow they will be taken on a victory lap of the city.

They will ride an open-top bus from Writers' Square in Cathedral Quarter along Royal Avenue and down Donegall Place before they pass around City Hall, between 1pm and 2pm.

Barnes and Conlan will then be greeted on the cobbled area at the front of City Hall by Deputy Lord Mayor, Councillor Tierna Cunningham.

The boxers arrived in Dublin today with the Irish team, which had its most successful Games since 1956.

The team won five medals - one gold, one silver and three bronze.

Barnes, 25, also won bronze in Beijing.

His medal in this Olympics makes him the first boxer from the island of Ireland to win medals at consecutive Games.

Conlan, 20, who is a member of west Belfast's St John Bosco club, won his first medal in his Olympic debut.

Other Olympic medallists from Northern Ireland, the Team GB rowers Alan Campbell, who won bronze in the men's single sculls event, and brothers Peter and Richard Chambers, who were part of the team that won silver in the men's lightweight four, will be welcomed back to their home town of Coleraine on Wednesday.

President Michael D Higgins has also invited the entire Irish team to a reception at his official residence, Aras an Uachtarain.

(NE)