Hession heads Irish charge

THE stars turned up and performed and the others all exceeded what was expected of them as Ireland not only retained First League status but reinforced their position in the table at the European Team Championships in Budapest over the weekend.

Paul Hession posted the fastest time by a European athlete this year when he won the 200m in 20.46 secs, David Gillick equalled his seasonal best of 45.32 secs for second place in the 400m and Thomas Chamney won the 800m in 1:47.86.

Hession’s performance makes him the fastest European over 200m ahead of Leon Baptiste (Great Britain) 20.53, who had a poor run in Bergen yesterday, and Christophe Lamaitre (France) 20.56.

But when the European championships come around next month in Barcelona one of the most significant performances of the weekend could be Derval O’Rourke’s run in the women’s 100m hurdles in which she finished second to Nevin Yanit (Turkey) in 12.80 secs which was her fastest time ever this early in the season.

More significant that the time, however, was the fact that she had the reigning European champion, Susanna Kallur (Sweden), back in fourth place in 12.88 secs.

Kallur had a packed stadium behind her when she won the European title in Gothenburg four years ago when even the photo finish camera could not separate O’Rourke and the German, Kirsten Bolm, in their battle for the silver medal.

And there was another big performance from the Paralympic gold medallist, Jason Smyth, who beat another reigning European champion, Francis Obikwelu (Potrugal) to win the 100m in 10.27 secs to record another fast time and claim his biggest scalp to date.

Obikwelu, of Nigerian origin, set a championship record at 9.99 secs when he won the 100m title in Gothenburg but he had to be content with second place in 10.28 secs in a fighting finish with the City of Derry athlete in Budapest.

Smyth, who is partially sighted was a double gold medallist at the 2008 Paralympic Games and his 10.32 sec run at the Northern Ireland championships a couple of weeks ago puts him second on the All Time list behind Paul Hession and qualifies him for both the European championships and the Commonwealth Games.

Of the other young guns in action yesterday Waterford’s Niamh Whelan (Ferrybank) also made a major breakthrough when she won her 200m race in 23.30 sec which qualifies her for the European championships and moves her up to third place on the All Time list ahead of Joanne Cuddihy who missed out with an ankle injury. Marian Andrews won her 400m race in 54.46secs.

Unfortunately her Ferrybank clubmate, Kelly Proper, the national long jump champion and record holder, was a late withdrawal from the team due to a chest infection while Joanne Cuddihy also missed out. This was undoubtedly the best performance by what might be considered an understrength Irish team at what is now a very high level of competition,” Team Manager Patsy McGonagle said. “We had a number of key athletes missing including but the stars all delivered and the remainder performed above expectations. Going out we drew up a ranking list of the athletes and, with the exception of a one or two, they all performed up to and above what was expected of them and that is very good for us as a nation going forward.”

“It was always going to be a struggle but, collectively, they performed with great spirit and courage and, at the end of two wonderful days of competition we were in eight position with 240.5 points and just behind Belgium.

“We had big breakthrough performances from the likes of Jason Smyth and Niamh Whelan while Paul Hession, David Gillick and Derval O’Rourke turned in inspirational performances and when we needed to consolidate our position on the table Thomas Chamney came up with a superb victory in the 800m.

“Mark Christie showed another side to his character when he fought out an exciting finish to the 5,000m with the former Olympic 1,500m bronze medallist, Rui Silva, while high jumper Kourosh Foroughi jumped up the European rankings with a new pb of 2.20m in the high jump.

“But the fact that Derval (O’Rourke) beat Susanna Kallur could be very significant when the European championships come around. All in all, it is onwards and upwards from here.”