Heffernan dismay at poor showing

ROBERT HEFFERNAN was stunned after failing to make the top 10 in the men’s 20k walk at the world championships on Saturday.

Russia’s Olympic champion, Valeriy Borchin, won with ease in 1:18:41 while Hao Wang from China improved on his fourth placing in Beijing to take the silver medal with Eder Sanchez, the Mexican who set a new personal best for the 3,000m walk at Cork City Sports last month, finishing third in another pb of 1:19.22.

Heffernan was 15th in 1:22.09 and struggled to explain a disappointing performance after his sixth place in Osaka two years earlier and his eighth in Beijing last year.

“I just did not feel good – I had no energy,” he said. “The plan was to move up with them. I don’t know how to explain it. I thought preparations went all right. Maybe I trained too hard or something. I am disappointed.

“After 5k when the boys went away I thought I was going to pull them back but I just couldn’t. When I saw “Paco” (Hernandez) drop out it would have been very easy for me to drop out as well. That’s how it was. It was just a matter of staying in there.”

He continued: “I opted to race differently, I didn’t want to take control early on. The plan was to put myself in a position where I could go with them and it didn’t work out. I could have gone up there and probably mixed it around at the top. Today I wanted to sit, sit and sit and that’s a different situation for me. It was a different way of racing when you have to sit in with no emotion or adrenalin.”

He was already out of contention when Borchin and Wang made another move after 15km with Luis López falling quickly off the pace place.

After a kilometre Borchin again accelerated moving to the lead on his own and was never going to surrender that advantage.

Battered, bruised and bleeding, Thomas Chamney blamed himself for failing to get out of the first round of the men’s 1,500 after he appeared to have a place in the top five at his mercy until getting caught up in traffic on the back straight.

“The South African (Peter Van Der Westhuizen) elbowed the Algerian (Anter Zerguelaine) off the track beside me,” he said. “There was an advertising board on the infield. The Algerian had to run past that and jump back on the track in front of me.”

That was all happening behind the young Kenyan Asbel Kipruto Kiprop and former Kenyan, Bernard Lagat (USA) who is defending both the 1,500m and 5,000m titles here.

Chamney finished seventh in 3:42.37. “I felt great but I was stuck on the inside but then that is the first championship race I have run at 1,500m.

“I have to start somewhere. My coach pointed out that I was coming here because I am supposed to run 1,500m in Barcelona next year and London in 2012. Looking at it from that point of view I can only be positive because I was competitive.”

But Roisín McGettigan, an Olympic finalist last year was never competitive in her heat of the 3,000m steeplechase won by Habiba Ghribi (Tunisia) in 9:26.40. The Irish woman, who had serious problems with the water jump, finished one from the rear in 9:59.10.

“I’ve had a terrible season but I thought that I could turn it around,” McGettigan said. “I did everything humanly possible to get myself back to my old form. I gave it every possible out there.

“Funny, I practised the water jump more than ever in preparation for this and it was terrible how there. I need to take a step back and see how I can re-build from here,” she added.