Lombard set fair for Santry and beyond

AFTER years of hard grafting Cork’s Cathal Lombard has become an overnight success.

He goes into this weekend’s Woodies DIY national senior championships at Morton Stadium, Santry, having already posted his qualifying standard for next year’s Olympic Games and booked his seat on the flight to Paris for the world championships in two weeks’ time.

It took years of hard work, punctuated by frustrating injuries, to arrive in this position but it all came together for him last weekend in Huesden-Zolder where he posted a career best time of 13:19.22 to become the fastest Irishman of all time over 5,000m and post his A standard for Athen next year.