Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you will have heard that Derval O’Rourke smashed pb’s, national records and all expectations in 7.84 exhillerating seconds in Moscow on Saturday.  A fantastic achievement for her – Ireland’s only ever sprint world champion.  Looking at the race, you could be forgiven for thinking that she had come 4th, so tight was the finish, but the camera doesn’t lie and she beat off the competition on the dip.  Well done Derval from all at Craughwell AC.

Our other major finalists did quite well too.  James Nolan looked strong in finishing 6th in the 1500M in just under 3:44 – not an amazingly fast race, but a great positional finish for James – the 1500M is such a hotly contested event that a 6th place finish shows spectacularly rare talent.

Alastair Cragg finished 4th in the 3000M, one of the highest-standard 3K fields in memory.  He is just back from a bad injury and feels that his strength hasn’t fully returned.  However he still ran a season’s best of 7:46, and managed to leave some kenyans and ethiopians in his wake.  He beat the younger Bekele brother, but there was no catching the spectacular Kenenisa who cruised home in 7:39.  Alastair is definitely the fastest non-african in the world and I have a feeling that the best is yet to come.

All in all a successful championship for Irish athletics – bouyed up by some encouraging performances and a gold medal to boot.