All four Irish athletes competing in the morning session at the World Indoor Athletics Championships have been knocked out – leaving one representative for the remainder of the weekend in Poland.
David McCarthy of West Waterford AC was the first in action, and came the closest to reaching his respective final, pipped by one place and 0.16 seconds in his bid to reach the 1500m final.
McCarthy probably couldn’t have asked for a tougher semi-final, lining up alongside three of the top four from the last World Championships in Istanbul – including reigning world champion Abdalaati Iguider of Morocco - plus the serial Morton Mile winner Will Leer.
The Deise runner kept in the front pack throughout lap-by-lap, with only a couple of back markers burnt out at the back.
Sixth at the bell, and with the top two in each semi-final progressing along with the three next fastest losers across all semi-finals, McCarthy knew that moving up a place in this fast semi might just get him into tomorrow’s final.
As it happened, Istanbul silver-medallist Ilham Tanui Özbilen of Turkey held him off to protect fifth spot and deny McCarthy by one place in the overall standings in a time 0.15 seconds quicker than the Irishman.
McCarthy’s time of 3 minutes, 39.46 seconds was three-tenths outside his lifetime indoor best set last month in Athlone.
“Looking at it, it is a good performance being one place away but it’s like finishing fourth and missing out on a medal. It’s one place away,” McCarthy said afterwards.
“For me it would have been great reaching that final. The final was the goal coming here, because from there anything could have happened.
“No matter how close you are, when you don’t make it, you don’t make it.”
Donegal athlete Mark English came home fourth in his 800m semi-final in 1:47.60 – around three-quarters-of-a-second outside his personal best - as the weeks lost to illness earlier this season caught up with him.
English needed an extra half-a-second to get him through to the four-lap final as Adam Kszczot of Poland took the win in 1:45.76.
Andrew Osagie and Jeremiah Mutai of Kenya also finished ahead of the 2012 World Junior finalist.
The UCD AC athlete was forced to pull out of the recent meeting in Birmingham through a virus and felt the Worlds came a fortnight too early for him.
English said: “I gave everything out there. I left it all out on the track. I’m short of getting sick at the moment.
“I wouldn’t change anything, I executed my plan perfectly. Mutai took it out in 51 seconds. That was perfect, I would I would come back in 53 and qualify but just didn’t have it in that last lap.”
There was no joy in the women’s 800m heats either despite season’s bests from Rose-Anne Galligan and Ciara Everard in their semi-finals.
Cheltenham-based Galligan of Newbridge AC was fifth in her semi-final in 2:03.30, while Kilkenny’s Everard, of UCD AC, was sixth in a later heat in 2:03.69.
The winning time in all three semi-finals was in the 2:00 mark, with Galligan’s heat the quickest – Angelika Cichocka of Poland running a world leading 2:00.37.
Both were precise in their post-race analysis.
Galligan: “Looking at previous results you have to run 2:01 to get to a final.”
Everard: “I didn’t come here to run a season’s best.”
Galligan added: “Six only make it to the final so I knew realistically that wasn’t going to happen. My aim was just to run the best race I could and stick to my own splits no matter was anyone else was doing.”
Everard continued: “The qualification was always going to be tough - just the winner and the three fastest after that to go through. I’m disappointed as I felt I was in 2:02 shape. I thought I would have run that but it obviously didn’t happen today.”
Only Claire Tarplee of Dundrum South Dublin is left representing Ireland for the weekend. Her 1500m semi-final is tonight at 6:45 Irish time.
There was some good news for an Irish representative in Sopot though.
Carlow physio Anthony “Star” Geoghegan has been included in the Croatian delegation after helping former world champion high jumper Blanka Vlasic through injury, and she qualified for the final – just – by clearing 1.92m in her comeback event.
SOURCE-IRISH NEWS
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