Kenneally joins huge entry for Ballycotton

NEWLY-CROWNED national senior cross-country champion, Mark Kenneally (Clonliffe Harriers), is among the entries for the phenomenon that is the Ballycotton 10 road race.

This year’s race – the 33rd in the series, which began back in 1978 – is on a later than usual date, March 21, in a change that was made to facilitate last Sunday’s national senior championships.

“Then we have the Cloyne Point to Point on March 14 and we could not clash with that event either,” race organiser, John Walshe, said.

The change of date, however, has made no difference to the huge enthusiasm for the event. Entries have been long closed, having reached the cut-off of 3,340 with a number of places held in reserve for the elite runners.

“We opened for entries at the start of December and we received 1,700 in just three days,” Walshe said.

“Unfortunately 700 entries had to be returned after we reached the cut off point.

“But we can only cater for so many. Last year we had 2,402 finishers – we had an entry of just 31 for our inaugural race.”

He finds it difficult to explain the attraction of the race, which continues to draw entries from Britain and the US.

“We were up and running for the first big running boom back in the early 80’s and now we are still going strong in the midst of the second running boom,” he said.

“We have been lucky in that we maintain the same course, the ethos has remained the same and, even when the last running boom ended, the entries continued to increase. We have a €15 entry fee and that includes championship timing.’’

This year they have attracted some interesting names. Kenneally, who travels to the USA the following week, will almost certainly take part although he is mulling over the world cross-country championships.

He won the nationals on Sunday and before that he was eighth in the European cross-country championships and sixth in the European clubs.

Sean Connolly (Tallaght), a runner-up last year, has been targeting this race while Brian McMahon and former Cork marathon winner, Alan O’Shea, as well as local athlete, Sean McGrath, are other leading athletes who will be aiming for big runs.

Beijing Olympian, Pauline Curley (Tullamore Harriers), will be back to defend the title she won for a second time last year.

Meanwhile Dundrum South Dublin AC have apologised for running Siofra Cleirigh-Buttner in the junior women’s race at the Woodies DIY National Cross-Country Championships in the Phoenix Park.

The 14-year-old schoolgirl was a runaway winner but was disqualified as she was under the lower limit of 16 years set down for junior athletes. There was a lot of sympathy for her and yesterday the chairman of DSD Athletic Club, Gerry Dunne, apologised on behalf of the club for running her in the race.

“In relation to the National Junior Cross Country Championships held in the Phoenix Park yesterday, we confirm that whereas Siofra Cleirigh-Buttner was not entered on our junior girls team, other athletes who had been entered were unavailable to race and Siofra’s name was added to the team on the day of the race by one of our club coaches,’’ he said.

“It transpires that Siofra was ineligible as she was too young and this was not noticed when the name was being added.

“As a club we now apologise to the Athletics Association of Ireland, to the organisers on the ground of what was a superbly run event and indeed to Siofra herself, who it should be noted was untroubled in an excellent performance.

“We can confirm that we will be taking steps internally to ensure that unfortunate situations like this do not reoccur.’’