Kelly, Amy and Megan shine at Brian Downing Meet
Fri 20 July 2012--admin
There was a fantastic night’s athletics at Antrim on Wednesday night at the Lagan Valley AC promoted meet in honour of their esteemed member the late Brian Downing. The excellent meeting was a fitting tribute to one of the sport’s great servants and many City of Lisburn athletes took the chance to participate in what many commented was the best atmosphere at a local event for a long time. The extra-special element was the appearance of some international athletes in many of the senior races, who were in Antrim preparing for the forthcoming Olympic Games.
Robbie Marrs was the first Lisburn athlete in action, and he recorded an excellent PB of 12.47s (+0.6m/s) while placing 3rd in the U15 100m. This eclipsed his sister Megan’s PB but she had the chance to fix things in the very next race, the U15 Girls’ 100m. Hurdles star Megan gave an extremely impressive display of powerful sprinting to win by a huge margin in what was undoubtedly a very fast time. However, she was left frustrated whan a failure in the electronic timing meant she had to settle for a hand-timed PB of 12.4s. This moves her further up the Power of Ten rankings to place her at no. 11 in the UK U15 100m lists. Sarah Woods was on the podium too after a 14.5s 2nd place behind Megan.
In the U13 800m Kate Gourley ran well to place 2nd girl in a time of 2:46.03 while Bradley Mulholland was 4th boy in 2:38. Rebecca Harvey ran 2:35 to place 9th in her U17 800m while Jonny Whan looked sharp as he placed 5th in the U17 boys’ 800m in 2:14.38.
In the senior races Kelly Neely had a strong run against a good quality field for 3rd in 2:07.9 with Erin McIlveen 6th in 2:12.9. The Brian Downing Memorial Senior Womens 200m was one of the most anticipated races on the programme, where Amy Foster ultimately won in a controlled 25.11s (+1.3s).
In the field events Anna McIlmoyle was 3rd at the high jump with 1.50m and Kathryn Wallace 4th in the hammer with 31.66m. Caris Greenwood was 4th in the discus with a 35m effort with Amanda Mitchell 6th, while Adam Hill was 6th in the Senior long jump.
All in all then, a great night for the sport locally. Well done to all our athletes mentioned above on their performances.