A much more pleasant evening all round in Morton Stadium Santry for tonight’s second day of the Clonliffe Harriers 2020 club Championships. On the menu tonight for the sprinters were 400m and for the distance athletes it was the 5000.
The action got underway at 7.10pm precisely with the women’s 400 in a race dominated by the up-and-coming athletes which was won by Emma McDonnell from Katie Halpin, more noted as a middle distance athlete and another middle distance athlete Amy Sheehy in third place. Unfortunately for whatever reason the men’s 400 did not attract the interest it deserved with many no shows, although Mark McDonald did not let anyone down and was even prepared to run the race solo until three of the older juvenile’s stepped up to the plate. Mark naturally enough dominated the race with Keith Burke second and Adam Bateson third.
There was a great turnout for the 5000 m races. The ladies race was led out by Hope Saunders and Laura Tuite running side-by-side over the opening pacing laps, at roughly halfway Hope dropped Laura and came home first in a time of 18.17, Laura ran a very determined race to run a huge PB of 18.39 from third-place Ailish Malone in 19.11.
The men’s a race was much anticipated with Efrem Gidey hitting the front after a couple of laps with a big injection of pace to pull away from Sergiu Ciobanu and Ben Guiden. Efrem kept pace up throughout and was most comfortable in winning in a time of 14.25, Sergiu was second in 14.58, there was a change with 800 to go for third place as the fast finishing Karl Nolan chased down Ben taking third place in 15.34 with Ben fourth in a PB of 15.43 The B race was a fine race with Mick Fogerty’s lads battling it out from start to finish, there was a great finish down the home straight with Eoin Housley out kicking all to win in 17.30 two seconds ahead of Cillian Keegan who in turn was one second ahead of Cillian Sherrin and a few seconds back Andrew Gaffney. Shane Casey was well ahead of the pack in the C race clocking a time of 19.36 with Philip Matthews seconds 20.01 and Colm McDonnell third 20.05.
Once again a huge thank you to the officials for their hard work once again tonight and to the athletes for taking part in their club Championships. On Tuesday the 28th will have the final day of this year’s Championships featuring the 1500. Entry to that will open seven days beforehand. Further details soon.
Results (now corrected, apologies for glitches)
For photos see: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPtg1sh