European hopeful Eoin Everard leads Irish challenge at Cork IT

Cork City Sports meet director Joe Hartnett is extremely satisfied with the depth of talent assembled for the 65th edition of the event despite this year’s meet clashing with a number of national trials.

Of the 52 athletes yesterday selected to represent Ireland at the European championships in Amsterdam the week after next, only 10 will be present at CIT this evening, largely owing to the fact that last weekend’s National Senior Championships fell so close to the Cork City Sports meet. Indeed, the number of international athletes competing is also down on previous years given the scheduling of a number of national trials — the British and Spanish trials were held over the weekend, while the Jamaican and USA trials start this Thursday.

“This meeting is conflicting with everything,” Hartnett said at yesterday’s meet launch in Collins’ Barracks.

“The fact that so many national trials took place last weekend or are taking place this weekend has made our job much harder.

“The date was already set before I came in as meet director and you can’t really move the date because all the dates are taken. This decision was taken way back in September. The biggest problem for us was that Athletics Ireland moved their championships forward a week. If it had stayed where it was, it wouldn’t have conflicted much with us in terms of Irish athletes. It has.We have dealt with it and we are still getting a lot of Irish athletes.”

Eoin Everard, selected on the Irish team for Amsterdam, will compete in the 800m, while each of the five athletes picked on the women’s 4x100m relay team for the Europeans - Catherine McManus, Joan Healy, Niamh Whelan, Phil Healy and Sarah Murray - will toe the line for the 100m. Four-time Paralympic gold medalist Jason Smyth headlines the men’s 100m.

“We are absolutely delighted with the athletes we have competing,” continued Hartnett. “Some of the fields are small but very competitive. We have a very large field in the men’s 800m. That is going to be a very good race. We have Eoin Everard and we have Luke Matthews from Australia.

“From an international perspective, the highlight would be Collis Birmingham who is coming back to run in the 3,000m. He has won it twice. He is coming for his hattrick of wins. He finished seventh in the World Cross Country Championships last year so he is one of the top athletes in the world, outside of the Africans. We have Ryan Gregson, another Australian, in the mile and he’ll be looking to run in the low 3.50’s. Our own John Travers will be in the mile too and we are delighted to have John.”