Refreshed and upbeat Hession ready to take on the world
It will be a second Golden League appearance for the Athenry sprinter, who finished fourth at the Bislett Games in Oslo (20.53 secs) in June.
Hession may have missed out on a place in the final of the 200m at those championships but he was the epitome of consistency throughout an exciting campaign.
He finished second in his first round heat in 20.46 secs — a heat Rodney Martin (USA) just about won in 20.44 secs. Then he won his quarter-final in 20.50 secs and recorded exactly the same time in his semi-final despite running what he described as a poor bend. He blamed his performance over the first 50 metres on fatigue and has vowed to work hard on his stamina.
Stamina won’t be a problem for him on Friday night when he lines up at the meeting which is held in honour of the memory of Ivo Van Damme, the Belgian who tragically lost his life in a traffic accident shortly after finishing second to John Walker in the 1,500m at the Olympic Games in Montreal.
The Van Damme Memorial Golden League meeting has been dubbed the one-day Olympics as it always attracts the world’s leading athletes and that’s what makes it so exciting for Hession.
“I would expect a number of the finalists from Osaka to be there and I am looking forward to seeing how I perform against them,” he said yesterday.
“I took a couple of days off after Osaka and I feel quite fresh now. I know there will be a much tougher field in Brussels than there was in Oslo.”
Since the Golden League meeting in Oslo he set the Irish record at 20.30 secs and he is confident he can reduce that again before too long.
“It is difficult to compare my present form with my form at the national championships when I broke the record,” he said. “It’s to get a handle on it but I would like to think that I am in that kind of shape.” Joanne Cuddihy is the first reserve for the women’s 400m at the Brussels showpiece. She was first reserve for Zurich last Friday night as well and got a place in the race. A poor draw put her in Lane 1 and she slipped coming out of the blocks.
She finished eighth in 52.44 secs, well outside her national record she set at the world championships.
She was one of four members of the world championships team competing over the weekend. Roisin McGettigan, who finished 10th in the women’s 3,000m steeplechase in Osaka, was involved in an unsuccessful attempt on the women’s 3000m Steeplechase world record Russian World champion Yekaterina Volkova won in 9:26.80 (well outside record time) from Romania’s Cristina Casandra who finished in 9:30.39. Roisin McGettigan was third in 9:37.94.
At the same meeting David Gillick was seventh in the 400m in 46.89 secs and David Campbell finished sixth in the 800m in 1:48.61.
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