Irish sprinters make a quick exit from championships

THE IRISH sprinters in action yesterday morning all made quick exits from the championships.

Jer O’Donoghue would have needed to repeat his personal best of 6.76 for a place in the semi-finals. As it was he finished sixth in his head in 6.83, victory going to Jason gardener in 6.58.

Ailish McSweeney, the national record holder at 7.37 secs, came off a slow start to record 7.44 secs in her heat of the women’s 60m and 7.41 would have got her through to the semi-finals.

Emily Maher, who has been struggling with injury for the past four weeks, also finished last in her heat in 7.60 secs. In contrast to Ailish McSweeney, she got off to a good start but tied up at halfway.

David Gillick arrived in Madrid as one of the medal favourites for the 400m at the championships, and he reinforced his claims with a new personal best of 46.17 to win the fastest of the three semi-finals last night and set up another Ireland-Spain clash with David Canal, winner of his semi-final in 46.72.

With the winners of the three semi-finals guaranteed places in the final along with the three fastest losers was determined to leave nothing to chance.

He took the race by the scruff of the neck.

He closed up on Zsolt Szeglet of Hungary at the top bend and held him off in the critical battle for the inside, when they took the bell at the end of a 21.54 first lap. He raced away up the back straight and was able to drop his shoulders and relax in the finishing straight once he satisfied himself that he had done enough to win the race.

Dale Garland of Great Britain came through to take second place in 46.89 and qualify among the fastest losers with Szeglet tying up in 47.04.

David McCarthy was drawn against David Canal of Spain, the gold medal favourite coming into the championships, but he never got in a striking blow and finished fourth in 47.36 secs.

Rob Daly finished third in his heat in a seasonal best of 47.53 secs.

Another athlete with injury problems going into her event yesterday was high jumper, Deirdre Ryan, who was suffering from the ankle muscle problem every high jumper dreads. She cleared 1.78 and 1.83 impressively but it was getting progressively worse. She failed her first two attempts at 1.88 and when her third attempt was delayed due to work being carried out on the board into the long jump pit she had lost her momentum entirely and ended up 14th overall.

James Nolan had fancied his chances of a place in the final of the men’s 1,500m after a pb for 1,000m last week, but this was an up-and-down race and he was never comfortable.

He was back in sixth position when they went through 800m in two minutes and when he tried to get around he took a hammering from Miroslaw Formela of Poland, never got back into it and ended up ninth in 3:46.50.

Roisin McGhettigan took her hammering at the very start of the race, when two runners all but walked all over her. She heard what she thought was the recall, almost stopped and eventually trailed in a remote last in 4:35.04 behind the impressive Romanian, Elana Iagar, who won in 4:10.25 to head the qualifiers for the final.

The line-up for tonight’s Men’s 400m final is: David Gillick (Ireland), Dmitriy Forshev (Russia), David Canal (Spain), Sebastian Gatzka (Germany), Volodymyr Demchenko (Ukraine) and Dale Garland (Great Britain) with Gillick entitled to the prime lane draw as a result of his fast time.

IRISH IN ACTION TODAY: 10.30am: Heats of Women’s 200m: Ciara Sheehy; 11.15am: Heats of Men’s 200m: Paul Hession and Paul Brizzell; 4pm: Heats of Women’s 60m Hurdles: Derval O’Rourke.

4.25pm: Heats of Men’s 60m Hurdles: Peter Coghlan; 5.30pm: Semi-Finals of Women’s 200m; 5.45pm: Semi-Finals of Men’s 200m; 7.15pm: Final of Men’s 3,000m: Alistair Cragg and Mark Carroll.