Athletics: Mageean shows medal form ahead of Euros

Ciara Mageean will go to next week’s European Indoor Championships in Glasgow as a strong medal contender in the 1500m after a highly impressive victory at the national indoor arena on Saturday, the 26-year-old coasting to the Irish 3000m title in 9:02.57.

Athletics: Mageean shows medal form ahead of Euros

Ciara Mageean will go to next week’s European Indoor Championships in Glasgow as a strong medal contender in the 1500m after a highly impressive victory at the national indoor arena on Saturday, the 26-year-old coasting to the Irish 3000m title in 9:02.57.

Mageean showed some high-calibre rivals a clean pair of heels, coasting behind 2016 Olympian Sara Treacy for the first half before setting off alone at the front, coming home a wide-margin winner from Michelle Finn (9:14.13) and rising star Sarah Healy (9:24.48).

Her time was well inside the 3000m qualifying standard for the European Indoors, though Mageean revealed afterwards that she intends to stick to her plan to contest only the 1500m.

“It’s always the goal going into a championship to be up there and the ladies 1500m is red-hot, probably one of the most competitive events in Europe,” she said. “It’ll be tough but anything that’s worth it is never easy so I’ll go out and give it a lash.”

Her clocking owed much to the early effort of Treacy, who ultimately faded to fourth in 9:33.77. “I’m not fond of trying to pace myself,” admitted Mageean. “It sounds stupid but sometimes you lose the lap count and can chill a little bit when running on your own, so I was trying not to get distracted.

“I wanted to run faster than that but it’s hard when you’re out there on your own. I’m happy with that, it’s good to get out and have a good hard blast over 3K – it’s another stimulus in the legs.”

Mageean has endured much heartache in recent years, left in floods of tears during the last edition of the European Indoors in 2017 when she was forced to drop out of the 1500m final with injury. She was also well off her best at the World Championships that year in London, but a move to train with a professional group in Manchester has rekindled her fire.

“I had some tough times the previous few indoor seasons but I’m in a much better place now,” she said. “I’ll put those memories of European Indoors and World Indoors behind me. I’ve had a good winter and a good indoor season so far so I’m looking to put a good stamp down at Europeans.”

Sommer Lecky was the star of the field events on Saturday’s programme, the Finn Valley high jumper defeating rival Philippa Rogan via her first-time clearance at 1.86m. That was a season’s best for Lecky, a world U20 silver medallist last year, with Rogan taking silver with 1.83m.

Leevale’s Alex Wright was a class apart in the men’s 5000m race walk, lapping the entire field to win in 18:53.87, well clear of fellow Olympian Brendan Boyce (20:16.00). Former world youth champion Kate Veale was an impressive winner of the women’s 3000m race walk in 13:18.39, while Ruby Millet set an Irish U20 indoor record when winning the women’s long jump with 6.20m.

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