Athletics:Ireland's Paul Hession finished in seventh place in the men's 60 metres final at the 29th European Indoor Championships, Birmingham this afternoon.
Athletics: Ireland's Paul Hession finished in seventh place in the men's 60 metres final at the 29th European Indoor Championships, Birmingham this afternoon.
Great Britain's Jason Gardener won the race, coming in at 6.51 seconds, a new European record. Craig Pickering, also from Great Britain, came in second with a time of 6.59 seconds while France's Arnold Pognon finished third with 6.60 seconds. Hession ran 6.68 seconds.
Yesterday Hession smashed the Irish record of 6.63 seconds when he came second in his heat with a time of 6.61 seconds.
Mary Cullen finished in seventh place in the Women's 3,000 metres final which was won by Poland's Lidia Chojeccka with a time of 8.43 seconds.
Cullen had started well and was in the leading group with 1250 metres to go but then had a slight stumble, which resulted in her falling behind the leading pack. The Sligo woman ended up coming home in 7th place in a time of 9:00.42, which was seven seconds off her personal best.
James Nolan finished seventh place in the final of the 1500 metres . Nolan had initally been disqualified for obstucting another athlete in the race which Spain's Juan Carlos Higuero won. However, he was reinstated following an appeal.
Looking back over the weekend Irish team manager, Patsy McGonagle, was very happy with his team.
"I think the team have performed exceptionally well across the board. Looking at facts we have made five finals, there have been three national records and one gold medal and we were in contention right to the end on the final day, which was fantastic.
"I was delighted with the team's response to what we wanted from
them and we will now go to build on this for the rest of the
season", said McGonagle
The Irish team, along with gold medal winner David Gillick,
will arrive back in Dublin airport tomorrow morning.