Athletics: Joyless night for Irish

It was a joyless seventh night for Ireland at the World Athletics Championships in Edmonton, as none of the Irish competitors in action managed to progress through the heats at the Commonwealth Stadium.

In fact, the best Irish performance of the night came away from the Championship complex - Galway’s Olive Loughnane finishing a more than creditable 13th in the Women’s 20 Kilometre Walk in a time of one hour, 35 minutes, 24 seconds.

That time was eight minutes down on Russian Olimpiada Ivanova, who claimed the title in a Championship record time of 1:27:48.

However, Kerry’s Gillian O’Sullivan was disqualified for lifting both feet off the ground three times during the course of the race.

Three Irish athletes were in action in the semi-finals of the women’s 5000 metres.

Two of them were involved in the controversial opening semi, which was marked by Paula Radcliffe’s protest from the stands against Olga Yegorova.

While Yegorova was doing battle with foe Gabriela Szabo at the head of affairs, Bantry’s Breeda Dennehy-Willis finished 10th in 15:26.97, while Una English could only manage 18th in 16:26.15.

There was no joy either in the other semi-final for Maria McCambridge, who came 17th in 16:04.49.

Ireland's Sarah Reilly of Birchfield Harriers, who had lowered her national record to 23.02 in the previous round of the women’s 200 metres, failed to qualify for the final after finishing sixth in the last heat in 23.24.

Meanwhile, UCD’s James Nolan failed to learn from the tactics of Mark Carroll in the 1500 metres semis.

Just as Carroll had done in the 5000m, Nolan led from the start, clearing the first 400m in 1:00.28, passing the 800m mark in the lead at 2:00.34.

But there was to be no deviation from Carroll’s script, as Nolan faded in the closing lap and a half to finish 10th in 3:42.84.

Interestingly, Hudson Santos de Souza tried exactly the same tactic in the second semi-final, with the Brazilian scraping through to the final in eighth.