Hession on song in Finland
His time of 20.61 seconds into a headwind of one metre per second was a superb performance by the Athenry man with Cuus Hoogman (The Netherlands), who won the 100m on Saturday, back in third place.
There was a second national record for Ireland yesterday when Eileen O’Keeffe from Kilkenny broke her own hammer mark twice in the competition. After throwing 67 metres on her first visit to the circle, she threw 69.44 metres twice before fouling her fourth throw — only four throws are allowed in European Cup competition which puts added pressure on competitors.
And while it was a cause for celebration for the thrower who only became a full time athlete at the beginning of the month after joining Jim Kilty’s group earlier in the year, it was disappointing in that she was just short of the A standard for the world championships and Olympic Games which has been set at 60.50 metres.
Kilty insisted, however, that she is ready to throw beyond 70 metres in competition as she is already ahead of all her past performances in training.
O’Keefe said: “It feels great to have won at an international fixture of this standing — there were some good throwers out there. I felt very good coming into the competition and when throwing 67m with my first attempt I was certain I could go much further. I knew I was closing on it.”
O’Keeffe who celebrated her 26th birthday just a few days ago, said she wanted to attain the Olympic qualifying standard of 69.50m.
“There’s an international meeting in Kerry shortly with good opposition where hopefully I can pull it off.”
Derval O’Rourke took a huge step in the right direction when she finished second to European champion, Susanna Kallur (Sweden) in the 100m hurdles in a season’s best of 13.00 secs. Kallur just edged clear in the closing stages to win in 12.92 secs.
It was a high quality race in which Susan Claxton of Britain finished fourth in 13.25 secs. O’Rourke and Claxton will line up against each other at Cork City Sports next Saturday when Paul Hession and David Gillick will also be present.
The Cork woman made Kallur fight almost to the finishing line, when lack of racing saw her run out of steam.
“I’m starting to get there,” said O’Rourke. “I went to Oslo and my confidence was low as it was 10 months since I had competed and I had to remember what I had to do. Today I felt more like an athlete. There’s still so much to do. But things are looking better.”
There was mixed fortunes for the Irish men’s and women’s teams at the European Cup as the women hung on to their Division One status finishing sixth, just two points behind the Netherlands (78-76), while the men were relegated to Division Two, after finishing behind Switzerland who claimed the final place in Division One with 81 points to 76 for Ireland.
At the Mannheim Junior International meeting, David McCarthy from West Waterford achieved the qualifying standard for the European Junior Championships when he finished second in a thrilling 1,500m in 3:49.52 with the first four all under the qualifying standard.
The race was won by Daniel Lipus (Germany) in 3:49.30 with two other Germans third and fourth, Christoph Malik, 3:49.70 and Orth Florian, 3:49.78.
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