Winning start for ‘quietly confident’ O’Rourke

DERVAL O’ROURKE, in her characteristic championship fashion, launched her European campaign by winning her first-round heat of the 100m hurdles, beating one of the gold medal favourites, Carolin Nytra (Germany), with consummate ease in a seasonal best time of 12.88 secs.

This evening (7.25pm Irish time) she will face the European leader once again in the semi-finals with the big Turkish revelation, Nevin Yanit, also included in the line-up but she will not be fazed following a performance that had perfection written all over it.

Coming off a well-timed rather than explosive start, she arrived at the first hurdle spot on and, although the second was not quite so good, she was foot perfect and fancy free from there to the line, where she surprised Nytra on the dip.