Craughwell Gold for Connolly

After his recent 4th placing in the Bath half Marathon where he achieved the “A” standard in a new personal best time of 64.38 Sean Connolly was again in tremendous form last weekend in Craughwell Co Galway where he set a new course record of 49.12 when winning the 10 mile road race with almost 3 minutes to spare of his nearest rivals Paul Buckley (Ferbane) and Matt Bidwell (GCH). These recent successes and fantastic times are a clear indication that Sean is progressing very well in his quest to make the qualifying standard for the Marathon in the 2012 Olympics in London.

Elsewhere some of our juveniles were involved in the first weekend of the National Juvenile Indoor Championships in Magherafelt, Co Derry where Keith Doherty won bronze in the U17 60m sprint in a time of 7.44 whilst younger brother Eoin finished a good 5th in his U15 60m final. Seamus Noone finished 11th in his 600m final whilst Kayleigh Clarke, despite being unwell on the day did well to finish 10th and 12th in the U14 long jump and high jump contests respectively. At U16 degree Dylan Kennedy finished 7th in both his long jump and shot putt finals in his National Indoor debut.

In the 1500m finals Sean Mc Cabe finished 6th whilst Philip Murray finished 9th in his U18 contest and in the U16 contest Conor Murray unfortunately found the pace too hot in the opening few laps and retired from his contest. However, he is expected to be well in contention in the 800m contest in a few weeks time in Nenagh. In the U18 400m contests Aaron Mc Donagh in his first National contest failed to reach the final after he finished 3rd in his semi.

Sean Mc Cabe & Philip Murray

There were further successes for Tallaght athletes who competed in the Dublin St Patricks Festival 5k Road race in the City where Davy Byrne was the first of our athletes to cross the line in 10th (15.48) in the large field of almost 1300 recorded finishers, and he was followed home by Anthony Lieghio in 18th (16.07), Keith Sherlock in 27th (16.46) and Sean Mc Cabe, who after his 6th placing the day before in the National U17 Indoors 1500m final travelled home to take the top prize in the junior category after he finished 55th (17.50) overall, and his placing combined with the those of Davy, Anthony and Keith helped Tallaght take 3rd in the team category.

Sean was followed home by Gerry Woods in 61st (18.04) and his placing was good enough to secure 3rd prize in the O/500 category. Dessie Shorten was next in 67th with Brendan Ryan a few places further back in 78th, followed by Viv O’ Hanlon who took another 3rd prize in the O/60 category and he was followed home by Irfan Qureshi, Sean Murray, Tara Woods, Roisin O’ Hanlon, Peig Dunne, Richard Dunne, Brian Mac Cormaic, Fiona Brown, Linda Loughlin, Karl Gill, Aoife Brennan and Roisin Byrne all competed well on the day.