It was a fantastic day for the Clonliffe women at today’s national intermediate and masters cross country at Gowran Demesne, Co Kilkenny today.
The intermediate women took super silver led home in a superb 6th place by Laura Tuite running her best cross country race to date and Orna McGinley and Sarah Bateson who dead heated on the line for 13th/14th positions and 4th scorer Rachel McFadden in 19th position. The runs of both Laura and Sarah are noteworthy as both completed in yesterday’s indoor league final over 1500 and 3000 respectively, indeed Sarah had ran a PB 24 hours earlier. The scoring for were ably backed up by Hannah Browne in 20th, Meghan O’Keeffe 28th, Aisling Killelea 32nd and Aoife O’Reilly 33rd. The team came in a total of 52 points behind DCH 1st on 31 points with St Finbar’s 3rd on 97. Laura also claimed intercounty gold for Dublin.
The intermediate men finished in that very unlucky 4th position, a single point off 3rd and 3 points off 2nd! There were stirring runs by young Niall Carbery, who led for a period in the early stages in 7th position and by Ben Coughlan in 14th, Ben essentially getting out of the sickbed for the race. Both Karl Nolan and Cathal McHale battled to the death finishing 21st and 24th respectively, however unfortunately the team just came up that little bit short on the day. Eoin Keating had a fine run to finish 29th, next in was Sean Carrigg in 36th, Stephen Lyons 40th and Anto Doran 46th. Niall, Ben, Karl, Cathal and Eoin were on the Dublin team that took intercounty silver.
The master of women’s team W 35 put in a great day’s work, enforcing the team were a ‘woman down’ as captain Jenny Johnston was injured, but the team put in a brilliant performance led home by Jen Elvin in 4th position, 3rd individual W 35 taking individual bronze, next in, in her 1st race for the club was Yuliya Tarasova in 13th position, Ciara Peelo 43rd, Siobhan Devaney 45th, these scoring for taking team bronze. There were well backed up by the remainder of the team Elaine McLaughlin 73rd, Maura Matthews 78th and Yvonne McDonagh 108th. In addition to taking individual and club team bronze Jen Elvin led the Dublin team to intercounty gold, Yuliya also won intercounty gold.
The M 65 men’s team finished 4th, 8 points off bronze led home by Martin Tracey in 14th, Declan Murray 19th, Colm Doran 25th and George Maybury 30th. Both Martin and Declan scored on the Dublin intercounty teams that took bronze.