Day 2 of the national track and field championships at Morton Stadium, yesterday, Sunday the 27th saw Clonliffe athletes win 3 championship medals. Silvers courtesy of Cathal Doyle and Eoin Sheridan and bronze by Simon Galligan.
It was Galligan who won the 1st Clonliffe medal of the championships, on his return to competition after missing almost the entire season with a broken hand, as he took a fine bronze medal with a best throw of 58.36.
In the 100s Emily Jachna finished 8th in her heat in 13.25. In the men’s 100 Craig Duffy put a fine series together, despite a niggling injury, he finished 1st in his heat in a time of 10.78, in the semi-final he was 3rd clocking 10.70 and qualifying for the final where he finished 8th in a time of 10.62. Bilal Kanimodo was 2nd in his heat (10.97), 2nd also for Chris Sibanda (10.80) and 4th place in 10.95 for Luca Logue-Fonseca which saw the 3 of them join Craig Duffy in the semi-final where, bizarrely, all 4 Clonliffe athletes were drawn in the same semi. Duffy as noted above finished 3rd, 5th was Chris Sibanda 10.81, 7th Bilal 10.88 and 8th Luca 10.99. Eamonn Fahey was 7th in his heat in 11.60 and Adam Festus 9th (11.75).
Niamh Kelly ran a competitive race in the women’s 800 final but found the effort of qualifying for the final yesterday took its toll and she finished in 8th place in a time of 2.13.23. In the 5000 final there were fine runs by the 2 Clonliffe representatives: Colm Rooney was 7th in 14.18.01 and Ben Guiden ran a big PB of 14.26.55 to take 10th. In the 5000 C race Cian Murray took 2nd place (15.41.32), unfortunately neither Lee Duddy or Eoin Maguire finished.
Cathal Doyle lined up for the eagerly anticipated men’s 1500 final, Doyle of course was the defending champion having won 4 successive 1500 titles. This was once again a brilliant final with a real last lap burn up, Cathal took silver (3.44.79) behind Andrew Coscoran gold with Nick Griggs taking bronze.
The final event of the championship with Clonliffe interest was the discus where defending champion Eoin Sheridan had to settle for silver with a best of 52.66 behind Raheny’s Rory Devanney who had earlier also taken hammer gold.
That almost brings the curtain down on the domestic season with Wednesday night’s graded meeting still to come in Morton followed by the National Masters championships also at Morton on August 7 and 8th with the National League final on August 9 at HQ.