O’Keeffe withdraws from Morton Memorial Meeting

EILEEN O’KEEFFE has withdrawn from the featured hammer throw at tonight’s Brother Ireland Morton Memorial Meeting at Morton Stadium, citing a knee injury.

News of the injury comes as a major scare with the athletics programme at the Olympic Games just three weeks away, and it is not known how serious the problem is.

Earlier this week, Kamila Skolimowska, the Olympic hammer champion in 2000, was added to the star-studded line-up that already included reigning world champion Betty Heidler from Germany.

Skolimowska, 25, finished fifth in the 2004 Olympics, and won silver and bronze medals at the European championships in Helsinki in 2002 and Gothenburg in 2006. She has underscored her current form with a seasonal best throw of 73.50m this summer.

O’Keeffe and Heidler know each other well. They crossed paths at the world championships in Osaka last year when the Irish woman was one of seven throwers to exceed 70m in qualifying for the final.

At the national championships last Saturday, O’Keeffe was back to her best form with an impressive series. She opened her campaign with 70.14m and her next three throws were all over 72m: 72.02m, 72.75m and 72.17m.

Tonight’s field will also include the current European junior champion Kathrina Safrankova of the Czech Republic, Germans Kathrin Klaas and Andres Bunjes, and Bethany Hart of the USA, but the competition was built around Ireland’s Olympic hopeful.

Darren Campbell, who was bitterly disappointed after the selection of B- standard athletes for the Olympics at the weekend, will announce today whether or not he will compete in the feature event, the Morton Memorial Mile.

He is also entered in a race in Belgium tomorrow.

Bernard Williams of the USA, with a best time of 9.94 seconds, has also been added to the 100m field.

The full evening’s programme includes five 45-second men in the 400m and eight sub-10.3-second men over 100m. Events include the men’s three miles, one mile, 400m, 100m and pole vault. Women’s events include the 3,000m, 400m, 100m, hammer and high jump. The programme ends at 9pm with the mile.

Meanwhile, a number of Ireland’s Beijing-bound athletes will be in action in the Aviva London Grand Prix at Crystal Palace tonight and tomorrow.

Derval O’Rourke will face her most important assignment this season when she lines up for the 100m hurdles tomorrow.

Paul Hession will line up alongside the world’s best 200m runners. David Gillick, who missed out on the national championships at the weekend with a slight knee problem, will compete in the 400m. Alistair Cragg will compete in his final 5,000m race before the Olympics and Roisin McGettigan, who went close to her Irish record last week, will compete in the 3,000m steeplechase.