Washout for team Ireland at World Indoor Championships in Poland

It’s been a total wipeout for Ireland on the opening day of the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Sopot – all five of the Irish team have been knocked out already.

Claire Tarplee’s seventh place in her 1500m semi-final meant the entire squad had missed out on further progression into the weekend.

The Dundrum South Dublin athlete complained afterwards of illness as she coughed through a post-race interview, acerbated by the dry air inside the Ergo Arena.

European champion Abeba Aregawi of Sweden won Tarplee’s semi-final in 4:08.74, with Tarplee clocking 4:15.64 – a second outside her season’s best and 2.5 seconds off her lifetime record.

There had been some very close calls for the Irish athletes through the day, none more so than David McCarthy in the first race with Irish interest this morning.

The West Waterford AC athlete was pipped by one place and 0.16 seconds in his bid to reach the 1500m final.

McCarthy lined up alongside three of the top four from the last World Championships in Istanbul – including reigning world champion Abdalaati Iguider of Morocco - plus the serial Morton Mile winner Will Leer.

It was Istanbul silver-medallist Ilham Tanui Özbilen of Turkey who held him off to protect fifth spot and deny McCarthy, whose time of 3 minutes, 39.46 seconds was three-tenths outside his lifetime indoor best set last month in Athlone.

“Looking at it, it is a good performance being one place away but it’s like finishing fourth and missing out on a medal. It’s one place away,” McCarthy said afterwards.

“No matter how close you are, when you don’t make it, you don’t make it.”

Donegal athlete Mark English came home fourth in his 800m semi-final in 1:47.60 – around three-quarters-of-a-second outside his personal best - as the weeks lost to illness earlier this season caught up with him.

English needed an extra half-a-second to get him through to the four-lap final as Adam Kszczot of Poland took the win in 1:45.76.

The UCD athlete said: “I gave everything out there. I left it all out on the track. I’m short of getting sick at the moment.

“I wouldn’t change anything, I executed my plan perfectly. Mutai took it out in 51 seconds. That was perfect, I would I would come back in 53 and qualify but just didn’t have it in that last lap.”

Despite season’s bests from Rose-Anne Galligan and Ciara Everard in their semi-finals, they both bowed out also.

Galligan of Newbridge AC was fifth in her semi-final in 2:03.30, while Kilkenny’s Everard, of UCD AC, was sixth in a later heat in 2:03.69.

The winning time in all three semi-finals was in the 2:00 mark, with Galligan’s heat the quickest – Angelika Cichocka of Poland running a world leading 2:00.37.

Galligan said afterwards: “Looking at previous results you have to run 2:01 to get to a final.”

Everard was resolute: “I didn’t come here (just) to run a season’s best.”

The first gold medal of the World Indoors has gone to the Netherlands, with Nadine Broersen claiming the five-event pentathlon, finishing 62 points clear of recent Athlone IT Grand Prix double winner Brianne Theisen-Eaton of Canada, with Ukranian Alina Fodorova third.

- Will Downing, Sopot