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Athletics

June 2010

The athletics season on the track is drawing to a close at the present but recently the athletes attended an international competition in Tunisia, chasing qualification standards for the World Championships next year. Amanda Crotty was the star of the trip managing to win her B2 1,500m race in a fantastic PB time and securing a B standard. The only male member of the team, 15 year old Tony Stafford from Wexford, is a young man with great promise and came home with 2 silver medals. He is tantalizingly close to reaching the B qualifying Standard for the men’s B3 long Jump. Ailish Dunne and Nadine Lattimore took part in the B1 Shot Putt and Ailish won a bronze and Nadine came in 4th. Nadine’s preparation for the event was upset by a disagreement over the use of an audible signal from her guide but she still performed admirably and at the recent AAI National Championships this weekend (10th July) she recovered sufficiently to finish ahead of Ailish. These two ladies are likely to be head to head in competition with each other for selection to the paralympic team when this comes around.

Jason Smyth, from Co. Derry, who is current world and paralympic champion, moved a step closer to achieving his dream of qualifying for both the Olympics and Paralympics at London in 2012. He has secured qualification for the European Championships in Barcelona and the commonwealth Games in Delhi in October. He recently extended his PB for 100m to 10.32sec, which is a 0.09 quicker than he has ever run before and is inside the qualifying time for the European Championships in Barcelona next month. He is hoping to achieve his goal of becoming the first visually-impaired male athlete to compete in both the Olympics and Paralympics.