Kilkenny athletes show their class at Indoor Championships

There was some fantastic performances from Kilkenny athletes at the National Senior Indoors Championship which was held in the NIA in Abbotstown recently.

First up in the sprints was Cliodhna Manning (KCH) who stormed through her heat in first place on Saturday morning. The semi-finals produced another fine race placing second.

On Sunday afternoon, the 400m final was the one to watch and it certainly didn’t disappoint, Cliodhna had a fantastic run, placing fourth and narrowly missing out on a medal position.

John Kirby (St Senan’s) was running in the Senior Men’s 400m, second in his heat to progress to the evenings semi-final where he ran in fifth, but unfortunately not enough to reach the final this time.

Pia Langton (KCH) and Cathal O’Reilly (KCH) both running in the 800m distance, ran superb races to finish first in their heats to qualify for Sunday’s 800m final. Cathal ran in fifth in a very competitive race, while Pia who held her own through the entire race to finish an impressive third place in the Ladies 800m final.

Jamie Gahan (KCH) ran in the Men’s 3000m B/C heat two to finish in 10th place in an incredible time of 8:43.54.

There were two medals secured in the Pole Vault competitions with Shane Power (St Joseph’s) taking the third place bronze in the Senior Mens competition, clearing 4.40m and Chloe Lynch (Gowran AC) claiming second place silver in the ladies’ competition clearing 3.15m. Shane and Chloe have a great start to their indoor season following on from the AAI Games back in January when both took silver in the national competition.

Evan Walsh (St Joseph’s) was competing in his first senior championships at 16 years of age in the 5000m Senior Mens walk and produced an inspiring effort to finish 10th.