Byrne just misses out on shocking Twell

DEIRDRE BYRNE came within one second of creating the first major upset of the year in athletics when she almost pipped one of Britain’s great medal hopes for the 2012 Olympics, Stephanie Twell, for the women’s title at the IAAF International Cross-Country challenge at the Greenmount Campus, in Antrim.

Twell competed at last year’s Games in Beijing and last month won the European junior cross-country title for an unprecedented third successive year in Brussels.

Throughout the cross-country season she had beaten all of the leading British distance athletes but her amazing run almost came to an abrupt end at the Greenmount Campus where she had to pull out all the stops in a flying finish to hold off Ireland’s Byrne.