Britton’s back to her best at Gerry Farnan
You know the Irish cross-country season starts to really heat up when the high profile Aviva Gerry Farnan Cross Country Festival comes around. This year’s incarnation featured the Gerry Farnan Men’s race over 5 miles, and the Sheila Brennan Women’s race over 3 miles…
Additionally the Master’s event served as a trial for the upcoming Master Home Countries Cross Country International.
Sheila Brennan Women’s race
Fionnuala Britton would have left last year’s European Championship feeling disappointed but delivered a promising performance yesterday, the Irish Times reports
It was something of a return to form for the Wicklow athlete, who recently parted with long-serving coach Pat Diskin and is now working with Chris Jones, the high performance director with Triathlon Ireland. And she wasted no time displaying that form, winning the three-mile event in 15:36 – well clear of Lizzy Lee from Leevale with Siobhan Doherty of Borrisokane third in 16:50.
Gerry Farnan Men’s race
At Athletics Ireland they latched on to the battling performance of forty year old Seamus Power in their report on the men’s race:
A feature of the men’s five mile event won impressively by Brendan O’Neill of Dundrum was the performance of former international, Clare man Seamus Power who will be 40 next month.
Power was the man who made the running from the gun and while he slipped to fourth he finished strongly to take second, just 13 seconds behind 21 year old O’Neill, the winner in 24:23. “It’s just great to be running reasonably well again but my problem has been shaking off one injury after another” said the great Clare-man.
Novice winner, the up-and-coming junior, John Travers of Donore Harriers, finished an impressive fourth while Eoin Flynn, last week’s BHAA Teacher’s Cross-Country winner, who had made his debut at the WMRA World Championship this year, closed out the top five.
Full results over at Athletics Ireland and a number of videos from the race are online at Boards.ie.
