Heffernan heralds return with excellent third-place finish in Krakow

ROBERT HEFFERNAN is back on the road and heralded his return by finishing third in a 10k race in Krakow at the weekend behind Ilya Markov (Russia), silver medallist in the Olympics in 1996, and the 2004 Olympic silver medallist, Francisco Fernandez (Spain).

It was a dramatic return to competitive race walking by the Togher athlete who went to the line after a year of frustration. He had two hernia operations — and attempted to lead all the way despite the fact that he was taking on the two top-ranked 20k race walkers in the world.

“It was one of my best ever performances,” he insisted yesterday. “I raced in Spain three weeks ago — my first race in 13 months — and I felt really bad. I was like a fish out of water and it came as a shock to me because I had been going very well in training and usually when I am going well in training I have no difficulty transferring it into my racing. I was fuming.