World Masters Indoors 2019 (24th to 31st March)
World Masters Bronze for Eileen Kenny & Silver for Sean McMullin
Even though it’s obviously an Indoor Championships, the World Masters Indoors in Toruń (Poland) included some outdoor events such as 10k road race, 10k road walk and even cross country. Among the very large Irish team and flying the flag for Mullingar were Sean McMullin and Eileen Kenny.
Sean McMullin started his campaign on Monday afternoon 25th March with the 3,000m race walk where he finished just out of the medals in fourth place, only missing the bronze medal by a narrow margin. As a measure of the standard of competition that Sean was up against, the event was won in a new World record and it took a season’s best performance by the athlete in third to hold off Sean in the battle for the bronze medal. This was a great result against the very best master athletes in the World and while he obviously would have liked to win a medal, Sean has to be very satisfied with his performance. Sean had until Friday lunchtime 29th March to recover for the 10k Road Walk and the longer distance clearly suited him better and he lived up to his pre-race billing as a realistic medal prospect by finishing second to win the silver medal, showing great determination and grit to pull clear and hold off a late challenge and earn his place on the medal podium.
The 8k Cross Country on Monday afternoon 25th March took place over a very challenging course and despite a good effort to finish in 41 minutes 46 seconds, Eileen Kenny had to settle for a place out of the medals in seventh. She had much better fortune two days later in the 10k Road Race early on Wednesday morning 27th March, which was a combined men and women race with a huge entry of 340, where Eileen dug deep and with a strong run that produced a season’s best of 46 minutes 41 seconds, she was delighted to place third in her master category and win the bronze medal, within striking distance of the silver medal, to add another World masters medal to her growing collection.
