Ireland quartet take 4x100m silver at World Under 20 Championships
IRELAND’S super sprinters were at it again yesterday as the women’s 4x100 metres relay team won a splendid silver medal at the World Under 20 Championships in Finland.
Last week at the European Under 18 event in Hungary, Rhasidat Adeleke won 200m gold. Yesterday, having run the heat in Tampere, she wasn’t even in the relay quartet as Ireland ran Germany so close in the battle for gold.
Molly Scott, who had earlier run in the 100m hurdles semi-finals, ran a solid first leg, before handing over to 100m finalist Gina Akpe-Moses who made good headway down the back stretch.
Despite a less-thanperfect change with Ciara Neville, the latter kept pace with her German rival – neither the fancied United States or Jamaican teams reached the final – and a gold medal was on.
However, the final change between Neville and Dundalk schoolgirl Patience Jumbo Gula, another U18 sprinter, left Ireland with a mountain to climb to win gold.
Jumbo Gula did her best and clawed back plenty of ground on Denise Uphoff before the line came too soon. Germany won in 43.82 but Ireland’s 43.90 was a new junior record and just 0.06 off the senior mark.
Another U20 national mark was set by Orla O’Connor, who came 14th in the 10,000m race walk, with Niamh O’Connor 32nd. Darragh McElhinney was 18th in the 5,000m.
It is not just sprinting where Ireland has big talent coming through.
In today’s final session, 18-year-old Sommer Lecky goes for a medal in the final of the high jump, after qualifying with a jump of 1.84m, just one centimetre off her best. The future looks very encouraging for Irish athletics.