Athletics/ National Indoor Championships: Derval O'Rourke announced her World Indoor intentions at the Odyssey Arena in Belfast yesterday with a brilliant national record for the 60 metres hurdles. The Cork athlete cruised to a superb victory in 7.90 seconds at the Irish Indoor Championships, and will head to Moscow next month as a potential finalist.
Her excellent form was underlined by the fact she took the scalp of the top British runner Sara Claxton.
Her time is truly world class and improved her own national mark of 7.98, set when winning the British title a week ago, the first time an Irish athlete had broken eight seconds.
Yet O'Rourke has been promising to deliver a performance of this quality for the past couple of years when she competed in all the major championships.
This run also provides the ideal send-off for O'Rourke as she heads to Moscow, where the World Indoors take place from March 10th to 12th.
There was another Irish record at the championships, Anna Boyle from Ballymena breaking her own mark of 7.37 seconds when winning the 60 metres in 7.32. While her time is also well inside the standard for the World Indoors, Boyle is heading instead to Melbourne to represent Northern Ireland in the Commonwealth Games.
Ireland, however, will still have a representative in the 60 metres in Moscow as Emily Maher from Kilkenny finished third in 7.36, just a hundredth of a second inside the standard.
David Gillick, the reigning European indoor 400 metres champion, won the 200 metres yesterday in 21.45 but, as expected, is giving the rest of the indoor season a miss and is not going to Moscow.
That leaves David McCarthy to carry Irish hopes in the 400 metres - he achieved the qualifying standard last week.
He took second yesterday in 47.43 behind a guest runner, Alex Francique of Grenada, who clocked an impressive 46.19.
James Nolan also confirmed his good form after leading all the way to win the 1,500 metres in 3:44.12 and announced afterwards he would be going to Moscow, having achieved the standard when clocking 3:39.89 recently.
In Nolan's wake came two talented juniors, David McCarthy from Waterford finishing second and Ciarán Ó Lionáird of Cork a close third.
Ciarán McDonagh won the long jump with a leap of 7.93 metres and could also be selected for Moscow having jumped 8.00 recently.
Joe McAlister made it a home win in the 3,000 metres, clocking 8:16.96. But there was no joy for Ciara Sheehy in her quest to secure a 400-metres qualifying time; she could only manage third in 54.47, victory going to Joanne Cuddihy of UCD in 54.13.
• Olympic 10,000 metres champion Kenenisa Bekele yesterday failed in his second attempt on Haile Gebrselassie's world two-mile indoor record, at the grand prix in Birmingham.
The Ethiopian's first attempt came 12 months ago, but he was expected to be successful this time out.
But the 23-year-old was not helped by poor early pacemaking and failed by 0.43 seconds to better the 8:04.69 set by his Ethiopian mentor three years earlier.
Yelena Isinbayeva also failed to improve her world indoor record by one centimetre - to 4.92m - in the pole vault.
