THERE was hardly a dry eye in the clubhouse as Europe retained the Ryder Cup with an emphatic victory over America at the K Club over the weekend.

Emotions ran even higher than normal during the great sporting contest because of the sad death of Darren Clarke's wife Heather just six weeks ago.

Clarke, cheered on by his home crowd, played magnificently to take maximum points from his three matches before the tears understandably flowed with the whole team and millions of spectators - both at the course and in their living rooms - also feeling the popular Irishman's loss.

In terms of powerful sporting moments this year, it ranked alongside Tiger Woods' tears at the Open, mourning the loss of his father.

Crying in sport, however, is not a phenomenon unique to 2006.

Back in 1992, Great Britain's 400 metre runner Derek Redmond had a whole nation weeping along with him when he hobbled over the finishing line assisted by his father Jim at the Barcelona Olympics.

Redmond, who broke the quarter-mile British record at the age of 19, had missed the Seoul Olympics four years earlier because of an Achilles problem and saw his dreams of a medal shattered in Spain when, after taking the lead in his semi-final, he suffered a serious hamstring injury.

Pulling up lame as if he had been shot, Redmond hopped for a few strides determined to finish the race but then collapsed on the track.

Father Jim, meanwhile, who travelled all over the world with his son to watch him compete, was clambering down from the top row of the stands to reach his distressed son and, after grabbing him round the waist, the pair negotiated the final 120 metres together.

Redmond's face was constricted in pain, tears rolling down his face but a crowd of 65,000 rose to acclaim him with a reception fit for a champion.

A year later, Czech tennis player Jana Novotna was just as inconsolable after letting a commanding lead slip in the 100th Wimbledon ladies' single championship against Steffi Graf. She led 4-1 and 40-30 in the third and final set, having just taken the second 6-1.

But she crucially double faulted and went on to lose five games in a row, before sobbing on the shoulder of the Duchess of Kent.

Paul Gascoigne, meanwhile, relied on Gary Lineker for comfort when he blubbed his eyes out after receiving a yellow card for fouling German Thomas Berthold in the 1990 World Cup semi-finals.

Gazza had been the star of England's march to the last four but the caution was his second of the tournament and would have ruled him out of the final. The Three Lions were, however, beaten on penalties and Gazza returned a national hero.

American middle distance runner Mary Decker-Slaney would have received a very different welcome had she visited England in the mid-1980s.

Decker-Slaney's dreams of winning a 3,000m Olympic gold medal in front of a partisan Los Angeles crowd ended when, having already bumped into Great Britain's adopted South African Zola Budd, she gouged her spikes deep into the bare-footed teenager's heel midway through the race, tripped and fell on to the side of the track, where she wept like a spoilt brat.

Any form of sympathy from these shores quickly evaporated as "our" Zola, having finished a disturbed seventh in front of the baying crowd, offered an apology that Decker-Slaney refused to accept.

Eight years later, a happier Olympic moment saw pint-sized cox Garry Herbert unsuccessfully fight back the tears on the winners' podium, alongside the towering Searle brothers with the national anthem celebrating their narrow rowing victory over the Italian Abbagnale siblings.