Templemore was the venue last Saturday for the Munster Senior and Master’s Track and Field Championships, held in ideal conditions. It is great to report some brilliant performances and that you are all an inspiration to all our younger athletes, well done.
In the Senior Women’s 5000m race Ciara O Neill ran a great race. She was always well in contention throughout the race, moving into 2nd place midway through the race. Then as the race entered the final few laps, she began to close the gap on the leader, Ruth Heery of Waterford who had beaten Ciara in the 3000m the previous week. Ciara was still full of running on the final lap and coming down the final stretch she kept the pace going, closing the gap all the way, to win the silver medal in 17 mins 7.83 secs, just 1.25 secs off the gold medal, what a performance. This was a brilliant effort by Ciara who was setting a new PB for 5000m on the track and a great reward for all the hard training over the past couple of months.
In the master’s competition we had a number of debutants competing at this level for the very first time. Noel Howley had a brilliant debut. Competing in the over 70 category he put in two very good performances on his very first visit to a track competition. In the 1500m he showed a great turn of pace over the last 600m to win the gold medal in a very good time of 6 mins 27.09 secs. Buoyed by this performance he competed in the 3000m race later in the day. Here he again produced a brilliant effort when winning the silver medal in 14 mins 28.61 secs, two brilliant efforts. These Championship also saw Mark Hickey making his debut at this level for the Club. Mark is a former Club member as he competed for the Club as a Juvenile. He turned back the years last Saturday when winning the over 40 Long Jump title with his best jump of 4.33m. Earlier in the day he won the bronze medal in the 100m in 15.34 secs.
Pat Coffey making a welcome return to Track competition ran very well in the Men over 55 400m when winning the silver medal in 70.11 secs. Bernard Feery also had a good Championships when running well in the men’s over 55 800m to win the bronze medal in 2 mins 38.58 secs with Pat Coffey 4th over 55 in 2 mins 47.12 secs. Bernard O Neill showed he lost none of his speed during the Covid pandemic when posting two very good performances in Templemore last Saturday. In the 100m he was quick out of the blocks and kept the pace going to win Gold over 70 in 15.30 secs. Then later in the day he turned his attention to the 200m. He again he produced a brilliant effort around the half lap to win the over 70 title very impressively in 34.10 secs.
It was great to see an increase in the number of Club members competing on the track at adult level, hopefully these performances will encourage more of our members to compete on the Track and even in some Field events in the future.