O’Rourke makes her mark with new Irish record
It was a new Irish record - well inside her old mark of 8.22 - and inside the qualifying standard - 8.20 - for the world indoor championships in Birmingham in a month’s time.
It was an awesome performance on a track that is not renowned for speed and it left everyone gasping, including the mother of Latvia’s world ranked male high hurdler, Stanislavs Olijars, who coaches the runner-up.
She went up to the Cork woman afterwards to compliment her on her technique remarking that her hurdling style was completely different to what she had seen at the European championships last year.
And yesterday Jim Kilty, who has coached her since she moved from Leevale to UCD where she is an arts student, revealed how they had been working on her style for some considerable time.
“First of all we brought in a biomechanist and she did a 3D analysis on her. We found that she was taking off from a little bit too far out and, as a result, was losing momentum over the hurdles.
“Since then we have been working very hard on attacking the hurdle from three steps out and getting closer. It was tough going and Thursday was the first time it started to work.
“And on Sunday we saw the difference. It think it should be remembered that she ran that race with a damaged muscle in her side.”
Kilty predicted that she will run 8.10 secs before the season is out, hopefully at the world indoor championships in Birmingham.
“The Russians were expecting their girl run 8.10 on Sunday so that was a really big scalp for Derval,” Kilty added.
“Afterwards they invited her to South Africa in March and promised to put on hurdle races for her but she is doing her degree this year and felt it would not be the right thing to do.
“This was really European-class running. She has worked very hard and I hope that she will be rewarded with a semi-final spot at the world indoor championships.”
Paul Brizzell and Ciara Sheehy also posted their qualifying times for the world indoor championships at Cardiff and Glasgow, respectively, at the weekend.
All will be in action at the national indoor championships at the Odyssey Centre in Belfast over the coming weekend where Gary Ryan, after missing out when winning the 200m in Glasgow on Sunday, will be amongst those chasing the standard for Birmingham. O’Rourke has two meets lined up before the worlds - the Birmingham Games on February 22/23 and the AAA championships on March 1/2. She had also planned to compete at the world championships warm up meet in Manchester on March 8 but is likely to skip that now that she has the qualifying standard.
Meanwhile, Daniel Caulfield will be out of action for the rest of the season with an Achilles tendon injury.
He had to pull out of the 800m after a couple of laps at the Millrose Games on Friday night when it flared up.
The US-based athlete has been dogged by injury throughout his career. He was a semi-finalist at the world indoor championships in Lisbon. Leevale’s hopes of winning the national inter-club cross-country team title for the first time have suffered a setback with the news that Fiachra Lombard may not run the long course race this year. With Cathal and Fiachra Lombard, Martin McCarthy and Padraig Buckley as a likely fourth man they had big designs on one of the few trophies that has eluded them since the formation of the club.
They had a winner in the national intermediate championship at the Phoenix Park on Sunday when Claire Gibbons, a former US scholarship student, took the individual women’s title.
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