Good show in Scotland
LAST WEEKEND’S Celtic Games track and field meet at Grangemouth, Scotland, brought together a selection of the best young athletes from Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Wexford had four athletes on the Irish team: Aisling Kelly (Taghmon), Jack Forde (St. Killian’s), Róisín O’Reilly (Menapians) and Lystus Ebosele (D.M.P.).
The competition is an annual highlight on the under-age athletics calendar.
Securing a place on the Celtic Games team is something to which every young Irish athlete aspires. A prerequisite to being selected is winning one’s event at the national championships.
As hosts the Scots made the most of competing on home turf and were overall winners on 195 points. Ireland placed second on 167 points, with Wales in third on 133 points.
The Wexford athletes acquitted themselves very well, helping gain valuable points for Ireland.
Aisling Kelly (Taghmon) was third in the Under-16 100m (12.56s) and was a member of the mixed relay team which, thanks to good change-overs and superb individual efforts, got around in 47.03s to place second.
Lystus Ebosele (D.M.P.) capped a great season by winning gold and silver for Ireland. She won the Under-18 discus, with her first throw of 37.90m being her best of the series.
While her winning margin was in excess of three metres, the throw was a couple of metres short of the 39.97m P.B. achieved at the Leinsters earlier in the summer.
Lystus placed second in the shot putt (3kg) with 13.51m, just short of her best of 13.71m which she threw at the Celtic Games a year ago and less than the 14m target she had set herself.
Lystus was typically modest when summing up her performance in Scotland as leaving ‘room for improvement’.
Team manager Amanda Hynes interpreted her performance in a different way, saying that Lystus was one of the stars of the Irish team.
Jack Forde (St. Killian’s) likes to do his homework before each event. Chosen to compete in the Under-16 high jump, he knew that his main rival was a Scottish lad with a P.B. of 1.93m, a whole ten cms. better than Jack’s best.
Jack sailed over 1.81m but came undone at 1.86m when, almost clear, his heel clipped the bar. His rival went on to jump 1.91m, leaving Jack in the silver medal position.
Róisín O’Reilly (Menapians) showed some signs of end-ofseason fatigue in her Under-18 1,500m steeplechase. The fluidity over the barriers which she has shown in recent races was absent which resulted in her running slightly off the lead pace as the race progressed.
In the sprint for home a Welsh athlete nudged Róisín out of the bronze medal position by 0.01s. Notwithstanding this, the Menapians girl ran 5.10.52 minutes, less than a second slower than her P.B.
Overall, this was a great experience for the athletes. It served as a perfect way to sign off on, what for each, has been a successful season.
Meanwhile, the Irish team competing at next week’s European track and field championships in Berlin has been given a great boost with the news that Menapians star sprinter Leon Reid has been cleared to compete for Ireland.
Needless to say, everyone at Menapians A.C. is delighted with the news as Leon has been pursuing a transfer from Britain to Ireland for two years.