Cuddihy looks to continue progress

JOANNE CUDDIHY hopes to continue her impressive form in the first round heats of the Women’s 400m at the European championships in Gothenburg this morning.

The 22-year-old Kilkenny medical student, competing in her first senior championship, has set a number of personal bests in recent months.

She is in lane eight for the fourth and last heat. The first three in each heat go through to tomorrow evening’s semi-finals with the four fastest losers.

She has experience of championship running at youths, junior and U23 levels, finishing fifth in the world youth championships in 2001 and sixth at the world juniors the following year, and won a medal at the European juniors.

This year she has had a series of lifetime best performances over 200m and underscored her progression at this distance with her first national senior title in a personal best of 23.43 secs the day before she ran her best time for 400m at 51.28 secs en route to the title.

She will go to the line as the second fastest competitor in her heat — Olga Zaytseva in Lane 2 has the seasonal best time of 49.49 secs.

Martin Fagan also makes his senior track and field championship debut in Gothenburg this evening when he lines up for the final of the 10,000m.

The 23-year-old Mullingar man has the second slowest time of the qualifiers — a personal best of 28:41.41 he ran in Sacramento in June to take second in the NCAA championships.

He also ran lifetime bests of 3:41.89 for 1,500m, 4:04.92 for the mile, 7:57.69 indoors for 3,000m and 13:39.62 for 5,000m during the year.

Jose Manuel Martinez will defend the title he won in Munich but faces a big challenge from fellow Spaniard Juan Carlos De La Ossa, the only man in the field to have broken 28 minutes this year and going for a 5,000m/10,000m double here.

All three Spaniards in the field have run under 28 minutes in the past along with Christian Belz of Switzerland, Driss El Himer of France, Portugal’s Jose Ramos and the Russian, Dimitriy Maksimov, while all three Belgians and the five time European cross-country champion, Sergiy Lebid of Ukraine, have run close to 28 minutes to ensure a pretty quick time in tonight’s final.

Sprinters Anna Boyle (Ballymena & Antrim) and Emily Maher (Kilkenny City Harriers) will be in the women’s 100m with the first round heats to be decided this morning. Boyle goes in the first heat against gold medal favourite Kim Gevaert (Belgium) who ran the fastest time by a European in Brussels last month at 11.04 secs.

Maher goes in Heat 4 and, like her team mate, will need a big performance to go through to the second round. Deirdre Ryan (Dundrum South Dublin), who set a new Irish record at 1.92m this season, goes in Qualification Group B of the women’s high jump this morning.