Sport Journalist
The extraordinary turn of events in Irish women s 800 metre running took another twist last evening as 25-year-old Síofra Cléirigh Buttner smashed the Irish indoor record set only last Wednesday by Nadia Power.
With the Irish team to travel to Poland next week for the European Indoor Athletics Championships due to be named later today, the selectors now have to factor the Dundrum South Dublin athlete into their plans as her time of 2 minutes 0.58 seconds was a substantial improvement on Power s 2.00.98 mark set in Torun.
Cléirigh Buttner was racing in the American Track League meeting at Fayetteville where she was second behind Heather Maclean of the USA in a close finish with victory only eluding the Irish woman by just .06 of a second as she closed hard on the lead near the finish line.
Sport Journalist
Ireland s largest ever team for a major indoor championship will travel to Poland next week for the European Indoors, with 2019 medallists Mark English and Ciara Mageean carrying some of the best hopes of a medal among the 24-strong squad.
English is currently ranked seventh in Europe over 800 metres but he will bring vast experience to the task of potentially racing three-hard races in three days.
It s a refined skill to reach a six-man final in such a condensed schedule but his European Indoor medals from 2015 and 2019 are proof of his expertise in gauging how to put himself in position to challenge for a position on the rostrum.
The rush of Irish records and personal bests that have filled the sessions of the Elite ILH Micro Meeting at Abbotstown continued into day two with Phil Healy's sub 52-second run in the 400 metres headlining a long list of athletes making significant breakthroughs.