from Donore harriers At St Anne’s park in Raheny, Donore athletes and teams featured very strongly. Our Junior men took impressive silver, and our senior ladies were just pushed into 4th with our senior men showing the best performance for some years with 6th. The day started with our Under 10 girls leading the way with a team bronze. Great individual performances saw Max Van Haeften win the boys under 16 and Fiona Mahon take 4th in the senior ladies. Our Juveniles started the day with the under 10 girls setting the standard with a great team performance of 3rd. They were followed by a great show from our juvenile section with athletes in the under 10/12/14 and 16 year olds. Max Van Haeften gave an exhibition of front running to see off the rest of the under 16s in Dublin one by one to take another Dublin title.
Our Junior men, under 20s knew when they lined up that they were in with a real chance of medals. Gold would be tough especially with Eric Keogh sidelined with injury, but he turned out to support the lads as they bided to make it their year. Signs were good as John Travers bravely went shoulder to shoulder with Clonliffe’s David Flynn. Eoin Rowan also was in the top group on the first lap. Lee Van Haeften had held back from the swift pace followed by Darren Kelly, Darragh Mullen and Jonathan Lukaso who was making his club debut. As the second lap progressed John still was there with a lead group of 4 with Eoin having to just give ground to the leaders, but a further surge saw John detached eventually to fourth and Eoin battling in a second group. Lee worked his way through the field and in fact seemed to have judged things to perfection as he took some great scalps and finished just behind Eoin in 8th. John nearly regained 3rd with a great effort on the final lap and Eoin held on to 7th. Darren Kelly despite not having as much training as he would like behind him positioned himself well after the first lap and came through to head the group he was in 15th. Jonathan had a great debut in a high class field and considering he was stepping up 2 age groups, showed great potential and importantly pushed other clubs athletes back several places and finished 20th. Darragh brought the team home in 22nd with a strong last lap and showed a return to the form he is capable of. The team won a really convincing silver, well clear of Raheny. Clonliffe were winners but the donore lads are catching up…..watch this space and get healthy Eric!!!
The ladies senior team were defending a great recent record in the Dublin Champs. 6k was put on the menu instead of the traditional 5k, but this did not phase the ladies of Donore. A tough pace was set by Orla O’Mahony and the French/O’Carroll sisters matched initially by our own Adrienne Jordan, however it was too intense and Adrienne found herself leading the chase group. Fiona Mahon effortlessly made her way on to the back of that group and then with 2 laps to go made a move of her own and broke away to be the lone 4th placer and made a really good attempt at catching the leaders. Adrienne’s progress was interrupted temporarily by shoe trouble but she regained her stride to nearly regain the chase pack and finished 11th, a little down on the high standards she has set for herself but a run of great determination again as ever. Samantha Conroy meanwhile was working through the field behind and despite not being the ideal course for her finished 22nd. Florrie Curley showed captain’s tenacity with a great fourth place for the team where she won a personal battle with a raheny athlete with a great surge out of the trees on the last lap, the kind of effort that can often make the difference to team placings. Mary MacDermott backed the scoring team up superbly in 34th and never gave up fighting. The team finally finished 4th, just 7 points of bronze. Another great team performance ladies well done!!
Finally the senior men did battle over 10k, After not fielding a team last year the men were galvanised to field the team of 6 which makes the Dublin senior one of the last really tough team competitions. We fielded John Downes our men’s coach and inspiration leading a senior team of the future, Mark Dooley, Danny Crean, Keith Daly, Gavin Keogh and Ken Nugent. Ken shored up the team despite being just 6 days after a really good marathon of 2hours 53minutes. The pace was ferocious from the start and wisely our boys hung back off the pace. John came through to 20th. Mark Dooley in his senior debut for the club paced it really well and steadily picked through the field and finished with a great middle distance sprint to take 26th. Danny again showed the virtue of good pacing and came through to 37th. Keith Daly had a steady return to competition after a host of injury problems and finished 41st, after consolidating in the middle of the race and promisingly finishing strong. Gavin, had a recent knee injury and had been away in the U.S. but showed it hadn’t taken too much away from him with a solid run in 46th. Ken was forced to be very conservative as he was not fully recovered from the marathon but did enough to catch a host of athletes who had gone off too fast and finished a good sixth placer for us in 51st.
The senior men were 6th but it was very important for our junior teams going forward for the senior men to face the tough competition of the Dublin seniors as this will build the club for the future. The same lads will be running in the novice and the intermediate too where they will find that the experience of the senior will really stand to them. So, well done lads for turning out and more than that for giving a really solid account of yourselves and the club as well.
All in all, the club and the great support the athletes received certainly made the clubs presence felt on this years Dublin Championships.