Gabriel jumps to a personal best in Santry

THE highlight of the Irish Track and Field season took place in Morton Stadium Santry on Saturday and Sunday last.

The cream of Irish Athletics gathered at the North Dublin venue with national titles along with European and Olympic Qualifying up for grabs.

The event was preceded by the Tailtean Games which is an inter provincial schools competition and the St Peters club had athletes competing in both events.

In the National Senior championship there were three athletes wearing the blue and black singlet of the Dromiskin based club.

Conor Durnin was in action in the triple jump on Saturday.

Conor has enjoyed a successful year to date at both junior and college level and didn’t look out of place among the countries top jumpers. His best of the six jumps was 13.34 which earned him a sixth place finish.

Mark Rogers who earlier in the year won a bronze medal in the National Combined events took part in the senior men’s high jump. Mark jumped 1.85m which earned him an eighth place finish.

Veteran club thrower Tom McGrane who is always available to represent the club when fit once again showed great spirit against his younger competitors with a putt of 9.13m in the senior men’s shot putt.

The best performance by a club athlete over the weekend came in the Tailtean Games when Gabriel Bell wearing the Leinster singlet put in a fantastic performance in the long jump.

Gabriel who only recently set a pb in the long jump posted a massive leap of 6.31m smashing his pb by 14 cm. Gabriel, who is eligible for the same age group next year finished in fourth place and will take great confidence going into the National juvenile championships next month.

Training continues on Tuesday and Thursday as athletes prepare for the national juvenile Championships and the national juvenile ‘B’ championships.