AAI Juvenile Indoors 2017 – day 3 (1st Apr)
Mullingar in the medals on final day of All-Ireland Indoors
The domestic indoor season came to a close on Saturday 1st April when the final day of the All-Ireland Juvenile Indoors took place in Athlone IT. The focus for Mullingar athletes was the 200m, 600m and 800m and by the end of the day, a total of five medals were won – two silvers and three bronze.
Awa Fane booked her place in the final of the girls 200m u/17 with a dominant display to win her heat with ease. Lining up in the final as a serious medal contender, Awa didn’t disappoint and blasted to third place in a new PB of 25.88 seconds to win her first All-Ireland medal. A fine third place for Odhran Cully in his heat of the very competitive boys 200m u/19 unfortunately wasn’t enough to see him qualify for the final, though third for Patrick Leydon in his heat was quick enough for him to advance. Drawing lane two in the final, Patrick worked hard around the tight bends, running quicker than in the heat to finish a very creditable fifth place in his final indoor juvenile competition.
Aimee Wallace cruised to a comfortable second place in the girls 600m u/12 heats to advance to the final. In the final Aimee took the early lead and controlled the race from the front, but was passed at the bell and despite a huge effort had to settle for second place at the finish but can be very proud of her performance in a great race. Philip McCartan and Callum Costello were equally impressive in their heats of the boys 600m u/12 to advance to the final. The final was a fantastic race and was run at a very fast pace right from the gun, Philip tracking the leader and Callum close behind also running strongly but despite Philip giving every last ounce of effort he just couldn’t close the gap and he finished second, with Callum finishing very fast in fourth and denied bronze by a narrow margin. As a measure of the quality of the race, the winning time of 1:40.37 smashed the 11 year old Championship Best Performance of 1:42.24 set by Mullingar’s Shane Fitzsimons back in 2006, Philip’s time of 1:41.34 was also well inside Shane’s mark, and Callum’s 1:43.02 in fourth place was not far outside it.
Phoebe Bate put in a very good effort in her heat of the girls 800m u/14 but didn’t advance to the final. Aoife Darby had a straight final in the girls 800m u/17 where she put herself in an excellent position throughout and when the final push for home came she was right there to respond and was rewarded with a third place finish to add bronze to her 1,500m gold won the week before. Brian Martin was very unlucky to draw the much quicker heat of the boys 800m u/17 and despite running a time that would have seen him qualify comfortably as an automatic qualifiers in the other heat, he didn’t advance to the final. Rachel Cornally kept in contention for the early laps of the girls 800m u/18 but such is the competition at this level she just didn’t have the edge on the day to keep in touch with the leaders in the closing stages and finished out of the medals. Conor McHugh made short work of his heat of the boys 800m u/18 to advance to the final where he turned in a fine sub-two minute performance of 1:59.09, enough to clinch the bronze medal in a close finish to round off the day for Mullingar on the medal podium.
All told, it has been one of the best indoor seasons for the Club’s juvenile athletes in several years, winning a total of ten All-Ireland medals to maintain Mullingar’s proud tradition.
