Further proof of the changing of the guard in Irish athletics was evident at the Dublin International Games in Santry on Saturday when the young breed of sprinters grabbed the attention with a number of performances. Emily Maher displayed a new step in her maturity as one of the country's most exciting sprint prospects. Early in the afternoon, the 19-year-old Kilkenny athlete still seemed a little below her best when finishing third in the 100 metres in 11.77 seconds and a fair ways down on Ireland's Sarah Reilly (11.65 seconds). But later, in the 200 metres, she probably ran the race of her life.
England's Sarah Wilhelmly may have got the better of her, but Maher's second-place time of 23.34 seconds was both a national junior and under-23 record and would have been a senior record two weeks ago had Reilly not lowered it to 23.13. Unfortunately, her time was also just 14 hundredths of a second outside the Olympic A standard.
Just behind her in third place was Ciara Sheehy, who also improved her best to 23.40 seconds, and afterwards both athletes made it clear that they hadn't given up hope yet of joining Reilly in the 200-metres event in Sydney. There was later a chance for them to make it in the 4x100 metres relay when Reilly, Sheehy, Maher and Leanne O'Callaghan went to the line but a disastrous baton exchange between Reilly and Sheehy in the second changeover ended their prospects. The South Africa squad won and achieved the qualifying time with 44.29 seconds.
The battle for places in the men's 4x400 metre relay, who have already achieved an Olympic qualifying mark, is now getting very interesting. Tomas Coman and Gordon Kennedy, who both lowered their personal bests, made significant claims for one of the four starting spots in Sydney.
Coman (20) became only the third Irish athlete to crack the 46-seconds barrier when he finished third in 45.84 seconds (another under-23 record) which was just .04 outside a ticket to Sydney. Kennedy, still just 19, ran 46.70 in the B race to earn both a national junior record and a qualifying mark for the World Junior Championships in Chile next October.
And the impressive sprinting didn't end there. Both Paul McKee, who clocked 46.06 behind Coman, and Paul Opperman, who finished fourth in the second race in a best of 46.79 seconds, are very much displaying the form which may yet secure them a spot amongst the relay quartet.
Ciaran McDonagh is still looking to regain his best long jumping form ahead of Sydney but Saturday's competition was a useful test all the same. Unfortunately for McDonagh, a change in the timetable caught him unaware and he had a lot less time to warm-up than he would have liked.
In her first competition since surpassing the eight-metre barrier in the Seville World Championships last August, the injury-riddled McDonagh used a shorter run up than customary. In the end he only took two jumps and with a best of 7.36 metres, had to settle for second behind England's Chris Davidson (7.45). Susan Walsh surprised a lot of people during the week by declaring to run the 800 metres rather than her familiar 400 metres hurdles. In fact, it was to be nothing more than a pace-making experience although in the end it wasn't needed as Russia's Olga Rapopova led from start to finish to win in one minute 59.69 seconds. Setting a personal best behind her was Niamh Beirne (who missed her 1,500 metres because of the same mix-up in the timetable) with an encouraging 2:06.63.
Breda Dennehy-Willis, Sydney qualifier in both the 5,000 and 10,000 metres, displayed plenty of class when winning the 1,500 metres in 4:16.81. There were also two major personal bests in the men's 800 metres as Daniel Caulfield and Daren Dineen clocked 1:46.84 and 1:46.88 to finish fourth and fifth respectively. Meanwhile, Terry McHugh made major progression towards reaching Sydney in the javelin when he won the Swiss Championships with a season's best of 81.22 metres - just short of the 82.00 metre A standard.
