Cork's Maeve O'Neill breaks Irish indoor 800m record in Boston

It smashed her previous best and is also an outright Irish U-23 record, bettering Nadia Power’s outdoor mark of 2:01.01 from 2020.

NEW RECORD: Cork runner Maeve O'Neill.

Maeve O’Neill produced a huge breakthrough to set an Irish indoor 800m record last night, the 21-year-old Cork athlete clocking 2:00.33 at the Saucony Battle for Boston meet.

The track at Boston University is renowned for fast times and the Doheny athlete, a student at Providence College in Rhode Island, made full use of it to better the previous record of 2:00.58, set by Síofra Cléirigh Büttner in 2021.

It smashed her previous best of 2:01.96, which was also run in Boston last month, and is also an outright Irish U-23 record, bettering Nadia Power’s outdoor mark of 2:01.01 from 2020.

O’Neill comfortably won her section at the meet, coming home five seconds clear of her closest pursuer, having gone through 400m in 59.09 and 600m in 1:29.74.

The time is inside the automatic qualifying standard for next month’s World Indoor Championships in Torun, Poland, though it remains to be seen if O’Neill will target the event given her NCAA commitments in the coming months.

At the same meeting, James Gormley clocked a personal best for the mile, finishing third in 3:53.38 to move eighth on the Irish indoor all-time list.

Elsewhere over the weekend, Luke McCann continued his comeback after knee surgery with an impressive win in Ourense, Spain, the 2024 Olympian clocking an indoor 800m PB of 1:47.64 to take victory at the World Indoor Tour Challenger meeting.

His younger sister Jodie came home second in the 1500m at the same meeting, clocking 4:12.67, while two-time Olympian Sophie Becker took victory over 400m in 53.27.