Dublin Graded T&F Meeting 2020 #1 (22nd July)

Big personal bests for Claire Fagan and Colin Smith

Normally taking place on eight evenings over the summer, but reduced to three this year, the first outdoor T&F fixture of the 2020 season, the Dublin Graded T&F Meeting, was held in Santry on Wednesday evening 22nd July.

In the women’s 10,000m, Claire Fagan put in a great effort to finish a close second in a magnificent 34:46.8, a massive PB by 1 minute 15 seconds, and as a measure of the quality of that time, it would have placed her just outside the top ten in last year’s European u/23 T&F Championships in Sweden, where Claire competed. In the men’s 10,000m Patrick Muldoon was very satisfied with his time of 37:22.8 to finish well up in his master category.

There were five races in the men’s 1,500m and in the first race the two Colin Smith from Mullingar competed; two athletes with the same name from the same Club, truly a race commentator’s nightmare! The older Colin finished strongly in sixth place in 3:57.5, and the younger Colin ninth in 4:04.2, which is a big improvement of ten seconds on his PB for the distance. Some confusion on timetable start times meant that the athletes in the second race hadn’t as much time to warm up as they thought they had or would have liked. Brian Martin was the best of the Mullingar trio in second place in 4:12.0, Andrew Daly seventh in 4:19.4, just ahead of Lorcan Mullen eighth in 4:19.6. These times don’t do them justice but reflect the effects of a reduced warm up, but they were still happy to finally get a race on the track this season.

Well done to Dublin Athletics for organising the event under the restrictions of the current Covid-19 protocols, not least being numbers in the stadium limited to 200 people, which presented significant challenges in ensuring everyone vacated the stadium as soon as possible after their event to allow others to enter for their events.