NI athletes claim personal bests and podium places at AAI Games!

Athletics Ireland host annual AAI Games in Dublin:

At the AAI Games at the Morton Stadium in Dublin (Sunday 28th May 2017), better weather conditions greeted many of the athletes who had been in action at the MIC Bertie Quinn Track & Field Meeting in Tullamore less than 24 hours earlier.

This was evident when Ballymena Runners man James Hamilton, who had clocked 4:03.59 for 1500m in Tullamore, ran a brilliant early season 4:00.77 for the same distance; this ranks James 3rd in the T20 World rankings.

Fellow Paralympic athletes Michael McKillop (North Belfast Harriers) and David Leavy (City of Lisburn AC) ran 4:16.33 and 4:43.56 respectively.

In the same (1500m) race, Oisin Gallen (Finn Valley AC) ran a 3:57.89 personal best for 3rd place and Neil McCartan (East Down AC) opened his season with a 3:59.25 finish for 4th place.  Conor Duffy (Glaslough Harriers) went agonisingly close to a sub-4 minute finish when he crossed the line in 4:00.07 (5th place).

There were also personal bests for Jonathan Whan (City of Lisburn AC) and Claudia Jalon (Marathon A.D) over 800m, with Claudia running 2:11.47 (2nd place) and Jonathan 1:56.07 (2nd place).

In the 100m, Ballymena & Antrim AC’s Christopher Doherty covered the distance in 11.32, but unfortunately the +2.2 wind will rule out what would have been a personal best for the up and coming athlete.  City of Lisburn AC pair Josh Armstrong and Anna McCauley were in action over the hurdles – Josh ran 15.10 (+1.1) over the 110m hurdles and Anna jumped the 100m hurdles in 14.40 (+0.4)

In other news (at AAI Games)…

There was a Northern Ireland 1st and 2nd in both the men’s long jump and the men’s javelin. In the long jump, Ben Fisher and Jonathon Hill, both coached by Rhiannon Rose, leaped to 6.91m (1st place) and 6.44m (2nd place) respectively. In the javelin, Gareth Crawford (Lifford-Strabane AC) threw a huge personal best of 62.81m for 1st place and Jack Magee (Ballymena & Antrim AC) landed a 60.21m throw for 2nd place.

Full results for the event can be found HERE.