OLYMPIC hammer thrower Eileen O’Keeffe could compete at the Cork City Sports with confirmation Ireland’s premier international track and field meeting will be held at the CIT Track in Bishopstown on July 3.

DERVAL O’ROURKE has withdrawn from Saturday’s Cork City Sports because of a groin injury picked up at the European Team Championships in Slovakia two weeks ago.

CAROLINA KLUFT has abandoned her hopes of competing at Cork City Sports on Saturday as a slump in form has sent the Olympic, world and European champion back to her training base in Sweden for some fine tuning.

FOR a number of years the Japanese federation sent small teams of athletes to Cork City Sports and that relationship will be renewed at The Mardyke on July 12 when the Far East will be represented by at least two of their Olympic hopefuls.

THE date for next year’s Cork City Sports has been put back to accommodate the US Olympic trials, the Russian championships and the Caribbean countries whose championships coincide with the US championships.

BUPA Ireland has withdrawn as sponsors of the Cork City Sports following their withdrawal from the Irish health insurance market.

BUPA Cork City Sports has rocketed into up to third place on the European list of Permit Meetings and just below Grand Prix status, which is determined on budgets, attendances, appearance money and television coverage as well as performances on the track.

THREE Irish athletes produced superlative performances in Mannheim over the weekend to qualify for next month’s world junior championships in Beijing.

ALISTAIR CRAGG insisted that a sub-13 minute 5,000m is a definite target for him as he put the finishing touches to his preparations for tomorrow night’s Gaz de France Golden League meeting in Paris.

ALISTAIR CRAGG — who made a late switch from the 3,000m to 1,500m at Saturday’s BUPA Ireland Cork City Sports — had to be content with third place, behind the Kenyan pair of Laban Rotich and Paul Korrir.

TWO of the fastest men on earth return to The Mardyke on Saturday for the BUPA Cork City Sports with confirmation yesterday that two of America’s top sprinters, Bernard Williams and Tyree Washington, are set to line up for the 100m and 200m, respectively.

More than 200 athletes are set to gather in Cork for the 55th BUPA Ireland Cork City Sports this weekend. Athletes from 32 countries with compete in 20 events and some well-known names are in the line-up.

THE basket girls and boys are the envy of other youngsters at all major athletics meetings. They are the privileged ones who get to carry the athletes’ gear. For years, Derval O’Rourke was one at the Mardyke.

The the performance of the day at today's Bupa Cork City Sports came from Australian Craig Mottram in the men's 3000m as he blew away the rest of the field in claiming victory in a time of 7 minutes 38 seconds.

OLYMPIC long jump champion, Dwight Phillips, was among the early arrivals as the stars for tomorrow’s BUPA Cork City Sports at The Mardyke began to assemble yesterday.

KELLY HOLMES has pulled out of Saturday’s BUPA Cork City Sports at the Mardyke because of the Achilles tendon problem that forced her out of the European Cup the weekend before last.

ANTANETTE KIRKLAND, partner of sprint sensation Bernard Williams, will join the line-up for the 100m hurdles at the BUPA Cork City Sports at The Mardyke on Saturday week.

BERNARD WILLIAMS, silver medallist in the 200m at last year’s Olympics and member of the USA gold medal winning 4 x 100m relay team in Atlanta will line up in the 100m at the BUPA Cork City Sports on July 2.

DAVID GILLICK will have the A standard for the world championships in Helsinki as his target when he lines up for the 400m at the European Cup in Leiria, Portugal, on the weekend of June 18/19.

Brendan Mooney

Brendan Mooney

DERVAL O’ROURKE ended an injury nightmare on Saturday with qualification for the European Indoor Championships in Madrid in March.

The Pole Vault event was first up at the BUPA Ireland Cork City Sports in the Mardyke today, but such was the quality of the field involved that a flood of people took their seats early in order to watch the action.

ON July 3 1984, 20 years to the day before today’s Cork City Sports, the giant Russian thrower, Yuri Sedykh, threw the 16lb hammer a remarkable 86.34 metres at the Mardyke, smashing the world record.

With just a day to go to the BUPA Ireland Cork City Sports at Cork's Mardyke Arena, a host of international athletes have converged on the city.

SOME of Ireland’s Olympic hopefuls have been going through a rough patch in recent days.

HIGH jump sensation Adrian O’Dwyer, was jumping for Olympic qualification in Algiers last week but on Saturday he will be jumping for joy at The Mardyke in Cork where he will again treat fans to the type of performance that saw him clear 2.30m and claim his place in Athens.

SONIA O’SULLIVAN will take her Olympic build-up to a new level when she lines up for the 1,500 metres at Gateshead on Sunday before returning to The Mardyke for the BUPA Cork City Sports the following Saturday and her final 5,000m race before Athens.

Sonia O'Sullivan today declared the importance of the BUPA Ireland Cork City Sports to her preparations for the Olympic Games.

PAUL McKEE walked away from his seasonal debut in Cardiff at the weekend with mixed feelings after running a personal best for 100 metres and following up with a dismal run over 300m, the race he had targeted.

THE IAAF are trying to trace a Moroccan athlete who tested positive for a banned substance at Cork City Sports last July.

SONIA O’SULLIVAN finished 15th of 16 finishers in the 1,500m at the Grand Prix in Madrid on Sunday night, but it was a run that was totally out of context and there is no need to panic.

SONIA O’SULLIVAN admitted yesterday she is taking longer than anticipated to get back on track ahead of the world championships in Paris next month.

CATHAL LOMBARD claimed his place on the Irish team for next month’s world championships in Paris with a spectacular performance at the British Milers Club meet in Watford at the weekend, finishing fourth in the 10,000m in 28:05.27 — comfortably inside the B standard of 28:06.00.

The warm weather attracted a large crowd to the Mardyke for the 52nd running of the BUPA Ireland Cork City Sports on Saturday.

Saturday’s BUPA Ireland Cork City Sports presents a number of local athletes with a golden opportunity to grab the limelight at Ireland's leading international track and field fixture.

SONIA O’SULLIVAN will be looking to tomorrow’s 1500 metres at the BUPA Ireland Cork City Sports to measure her form following Tuesday night’s disappointing 3000m run in Lausanne, where she finished a remote ninth to runaway Russian Yelena Zadorozhnaya.

With the confirmation that former world 400m indoor champion, the flamboyant Welshman, Jamie Baulch is set to run this event in next Saturday's Bupa Ireland Cork City Sports at the Mardyke the stage is set for a classic rematch of last March's thrilling but controversial 400m final at the World

SONIA O’SULLIVAN did not feel cheated out of an Olympic gold medal when French border police discovered drugs, thought to be performance enhancing, in a car belonging to Gabriela Szabo, two weeks ago.

SEVERAL leading US athletes are eyeing the BUPA Cork City Sports on July 5 in their lead up to the world championships in Paris.

A RECORD crowd is expected at the Mardyke this afternoon (2.00pm-5.00pm) to see if the queen of Irish athletics can run the fastest 3,000m ever in Ireland.