National Masters T&F 2024 (10th Aug)

The National Masters T&F were held in a blustery and at times wet Tullamore on Sunday 4th August where the Mullingar masters were in excellent medal-winning form, gathering an impressive total of seven individual medals between the five of them and we even had a sprint relay team winning medals too.

A long day of competition started with the Shot Putt, where Ramona Carey was competing in her first National masters competition and while she might have been disappointed to finish put of the medals with fifth place in her category, she will have learned much from the experience. Later in the day, Ramona contested the Discus and came very close to the medals, finishing fourth in her category.

No stranger to National competition, Colm Walsh put all his experience to excellent use and with a terrific performance in the 5,000m Walk he won his category, his 10th National walks title.

Aidan O’Donoghue had a very busy day, starting with the 200m where he finished third in his category in a time just hundredths outside his personal best, so an excellent performance. He followed this up with another bronze in the 100m Hurdles, and rounded off his day with his third bronze, in the Javelin.

Fresh from mid-week World record 4 x 800m relay exploits, Brigid McCabe cruised to easy victory in her category in the 3,000m. Tom Walsh is by far the dominant master man in his category in the Weight for Distance event and reinforced his reputation with another win by a big margin, propelling the 28 pound weight out to 7.72m.

It was great to see Mullingar field a 4 x 100m relay team and with excellent sprinting from Claire Lennon Gavin, Naomi Battle, Caroline Mullen and Linda Cunningham, the women finished second in a very close race to win silver medals, the final medals of the day for Mullingar [GD].