McDonagh to work with Jamaican sprinters

Former Ireland international long jumper Ciarán McDonagh will fly to Birmingham this morning to assist the Jamaican Olympic sprinters’ preparations for the London Games.

McDonagh, the Irish record-holder, is now a practising physical therapist based in Lucan, Co Dublin.

He first worked with the Jamaica squad back in June, when Asafa Powell suffered groin trouble at the Diamond League meeting in Rome.

“I got on well with Asafa and it was an honour to be asked out to work with them,” said McDonagh.

Powell’s agent, Paul Doyle, who coached McDonagh during his athletics career, summoned the 36-year-old to Italy where he treated the 100m superstar.

When Powell suffered a recurrence of the injury during the Jamaican Olympic trials, he personally requested McDonagh’s expertise.

The Athboy native, whose long jump career peaked with a 10th-place finish at the 1999 World Championships in Seville, also worked with the women’s 100m favourite for London, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, as well as Sherone Simpson, Shericka Williams and Jamaica’s Olympic men’s team captain, Michael Frater, during the trials in Kingston.

McDonagh set the Irish long jump record of 8.07m at a meeting in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 2005. He is the only Irishman ever to jump more than eight metres.