McElhinney sets new IUAA men's 3000m record

DARRAGH McElhinney set a new record at the Irish Universities Athletics Association (IUAA) Indoors held at the Sport Ireland National Indoor Arena in Abbottstown on Saturday.

The Glengarriff man, running for DCU, won gold in the men’s 3000m, and his winning time of 8:05:86 is also a new IUAA record.

In the women’s 400m Bandon AC’s Lauren McCourt, running for UCC, finished third. On Sunday Innishannon sprinter McCourt was part of a women’s U23 relay team that set a new U23 national record. McCourt, Caoimhe Cronin, Molly Hourihane and Miriam Daly posted a record time of 3.40.25.

Ballineen sprinter Joan Healy was also in action at the AAI Indoor Games when she posted a season’s best of 7.35 in a thrilling women’s 60m race. Healy and her Leevale teammate Lucy-May Sleeman lit up the competition as both posted 7.35. Healy’s previous best time this season was 7.37, as she chases the qualifying standard of 7.24 for the European Indoor Athletics Championships in March. Her current PB is 7.31, so she needs to run eight hundredths of a second faster than she ever has before.

‘That would be a new PB and it would be a big PB,’ Healy told this paper last month.