O’Byrne strikes gold at the National Junior Heptathlon
LARA O’Byrne’s victory in the National Junior Heptathlon at the Combined Events Championship was the highlight in another very strong week for Donore Harriers Athletic Club.
The Lucan woman amassed a total of 4140 points to secure the gold medal as she completed seven events in Santry over the weekend.
Lara O Byrne of Donore competing in the javelin event during the Junior Heptathlon.
Indeed she finished first in the Long Jump (4.85m for 519 points) as well as in the Javelin (26.43m for 409 points).
But her best return came in the High Jump in which she cleared 1.66m for a haul of 806 points and in the 100m Hurdles where she clocked 16.11 for 701.
She also achieved marks for her throw of 8.68m in the Shot Putt, her time of 28.15 in the 200m and 2.34.01 in the 800m to fend off the challenge of closest rival Caoimhe Rowe of Trim AC.
Elsewhere, there were team medals for both the Donore women’s and men’s squads at the Michael Manning Memo-rial Dunshaughlin 10km Road Race on Saturday.
Eric Keogh (30.49) led home a 14-strong contingent of club runners, taking fourth place in what was a performance that went a long way to seeing the Donore men emerge third the team competition.
Rossa Hurley crossed the line in ninth in 31.20 with Alasdair Brown 64th in 35.18 and Ciaran Ryan 96th in 36.35 to give Donore a tally of 165, just two points shy of runners-up Rathfarnham AC with Raheny Shamrocks (97) the clear winners.
The Donore Harriers women’s team (34) did go one better, placing second just one point behind DSD AC (33) and well clear of third place Civil Service AC (63).
The team was led home by Sorcha Nic Dhomhnaill (36.43), who was 98th overall and fifth in the women’s category.
Sinead Lambe finished up 125th and the eighth woman, while team captain Florence Curley completed the scoring after she came home 214th and, in the process, topped the Women’s Over 45 age group.
Ken Cronin (43.16) finished up 315th overall and second in the M60 division.
Elsewhere at the AAI Games David Slupko (14.94) fell short in his attempt to make the qualifying standard for the European Under 20s Championships at Boras, Sweden next month.
Slupko placed first when he competed as a guest in the National Junior Men’s Decathlon 110 metres hurdles race, which was combined with the AAI Games, but was more than half-a-second outside the qualifying mark of 14.25.
Aoife Lynch ran agonisingly close to the 200m B standard of 24.30 for the European Under 23 Championships when she clocked 24.32 in the final of the English Athletics Under 23 Championships at Bedford on Sunday, placing fourth.
