The annual Clonliffe Juvenile All Medal Open Sports provided a great afternoon’s entertainment at the Morton Stadium Santry on a sunny but windy day. The young athletes competing thoroughly enjoyed competing in a fun event which mainly is non-competitive but still many still showed their competitive instincts with every athlete competing at their best in the right spirit. The concept of the meet is that rather than having heats and finals every race is run as a final, with medals for the first three in each race. In the younger age groups there was final after final after final in the sprint events.
The turnout in the younger races was spectacular with many of these young athletes competing in several events from sprints to middle distance and then the ever popular field events in particular the turbo javelin and long jump drew huge numbers. Great credit goes to our hard-working club officials many of whom are athletes who themselves started their careers in this open sports and it was great to see them giving back. The presenters of the medals where Efrem Gidey who yesterday won the All Ireland schools 5000 and Aaron Cullen who won all Ireland schools 1500 bronze, both lads not only assisted with the medal presentations but later assisted in officiating – there are not many All Ireland winners the following day are holding a tape measure and officiating in a long jump competition!.
The day’s proceedings got under way with the ever popular tiny tots race: this race featured youngsters from probably two years of age to maybe five years of age. Later in the afternoon several of these tiny tot then ran the distance race over 300 and all coped admirably with the long distance and finished smiling as they chomped on the lollipops which were given out to all. It was also very good to see a lot of the older juveniles competing in this event and completing out of their comfort zone as some of the middle-distance runners talking in sprints and likewise some of the sprinters ended up running middle-distance events. Whether this leads to a change of emphasis with upcoming championship races is pretty doubtful judging by their post race reactions!.
Thankfully the threat of rain never materialized and although the wind did whip up on occasions to make it pretty chilly towards the end it proved to be a most enjoyable event for all: athletes parents and officials.
Clonliffe Harriers would like to thank all who took part in the event and contributed to making this such an enormously successful event. We would like to thank the clubs who supported the event and the parents of these young athletes and hope that they all enjoyed their day in the Morton Stadium Santry. As this really is a non-competitive day results are not being posted but we do hope you all enjoy the photographs of the day’s proceedings. We look forward to seeing you again compete in the 2020 Clonliffe Juvenile All Medal Open Sports.
Enjoy photos: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmDYaHSd