Lavin breaks her PB twice at World Indoors
A HEROIC day’s competing by Sarah Lavin ended with a seventh-placed finish in the final of the 60m hurdles at the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade last night.
The Limerick woman broke her personal best twice in eight hours to reach the final, a tremendous achievement in a sprint event.
Outside of qualifying for finals, personal bests are the main aim for Irish contenders in Belgrade, and the Limerick star delivered on both.
Lavin had been delighted with her performance in the heats, particularly given an early start — she was in action at 8.50am local time but still ran a time of 8.03 seconds. ‘To run a PB on the biggest stage, it’s a bit of an ask to do it at 9am after being up so early, but I’m obviously thrilled and I’ll move on now.’
That she did with a time of 7.97 seconds in the semi-final, finishing second and qualifying automatically for the final. There, she finished in a time of 8.09 seconds as an exhausting day finally caught up with her.
Her excellent effort constitutes the high water-mark for Irish efforts two days into the three-day championship.
Despite high hopes that he could build on the major championship experience that inspired him in
Tokyo, Andrew Coscoran was disappointed in failing to qualify from the heats of the 1500m.
‘I ran like a bit of a headless chicken,’ he said. ‘I tried to get on to the pace but I never really got going and ended up running wide for ages. The body felt okay, but it was just not my race.’
Luke McCann finished seventh in his heat of the same event, much to his disgust.
Israel Olatunde, the gifted teenage sprinter who claimed the national 100m title at 18 last summer, ran a brilliant time of 6.66 seconds to finish fourth in his 60m heat, just missing out on progression. His time was .04 of a second outside his personal best.
It was a tough day for Síofra Cléirigh-Buttner in the 8000m heats, her 2.06.99 placing her fifth and well out of contention. ‘Not only is it not good enough, it’s just not good at all,’ she said.