Sunday Addendum – O’Flaherty sets an indoors lifetime best over 3000m in Athlone

At the Athletics Ireland Indoor Games in the world class indoor athletics facility at Athlone, Newcastle’s Kerry O’Flaherty came home 2nd to Sara Treacy in the 3000m in a time of 9:18.17, nearly 3 seconds inside her lifetime best, In 3rd was Lifford’s Anne Marie McGlynn the Irish Captain of the bronze medal winning team at the European Cross-Country Championships join Bulgaria in December. In what is a short indoor season, next up will be the 3000m at the British Championships in Sheffield in a fortnight, 1500m at the International Grand Prix back at Athlone on the 18th followed buy the Irish Indoor Championships also in Athlone on the weekend of the 21st/22nd February.

Congratulations to Kerry O’Flaherty for a gutsy performance at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. She was ‘in the mix’ for much of the race in front of 44,000 spectators and came home 11th in 9:55.9 just three seconds outside her personal best and Northern Ireland Record. It’s been a great season for her, running three times inside her best before the start of the year.

10 days before the Commonwealth Games Steeplechase, Kerry O’Flaherty dropped down in distance to 1500m and onto the flat to come home 3rd in the Irish Championships at the Morton Stadium in Santry in 4:18.7. Winding up the pace from at the front after the initial slower couple of laps, O’Flaherty ran 2:12 for the last 800m but was out kicked by the fast finishing Ciara Mageean who ran a 63 seconds last lap to secure the national title. In 2nd was twice European Cross-Country Champion Fionnuala Britton who came home 0.4 seconds ahead of O’Flaherty. Full race coverage provided by East Down AC is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RJoN7Fup98&sns=fb

by Neil McCalister
The Brian Downing Memorial International Meet in Antrim lived up to the hype with Olympic athletes taking the limelight. Athletes from Oman, Djibouti, Egypt and Qatar who are here for an Olympic Games Pre Training Camp impressed the crowd and gave 3 Newcastle athletes the unique opportunity to witness their pre race preparations and to compete against some of the best athletes in the world. Continue reading →

Our club expert in reverse psychology, Joe, can add another fine result to his list as Kerry smashes the NI 5000 m record by 14 sec.  Well Done! Full results and report on ANI website