DUHAC’s women’s team were the success of the day
Gerard Claffey | Athletics Correspondent
After a hugely successful start to the year, when Trinity athletics club DUHAC took home bronze medals for both men and women at the Intervarsity Road Relays, Harrier’s captains Irene Gorman and Sam Mealy were quietly optimistic on another successful outing. 2013 has already seen a very successful Indoor Track and Field Intervarsities in Athlone, where Trinity sprinters took home 5 medals. This put pressure on the DUHAC distance crew to match their performance. The University of Ulster played host to this year’s Intervarsity Cross Country Championships, with the course set around the Jordanstown campus.
The afternoon of athletics kicked off with the Women’s race, where each athlete had to tackle a demanding 5 km course complete with hills, muck and a small bit of rain. DUHAC’s star athlete in this race was National Intermediate champion Maria O’Sullivan of Raheny Shamrocks AC, who wished to continue on her great success in recent cross country events. The race started out with Maria in front, toe-to-toe with Raheny club mate Fiona Roche of UCD. This battle continued for the whole race, up until the last lap where the UCD athlete’s years of cross country experience allowed her to pull away and take home the individual gold medal. Maria was not far behind and crossed the finish line in second place to claim her first individual Intervarsity Cross Country medal. The bronze medal was won by UL athlete Una Britton, sister to Irish international athlete Fionnuala Britton. Shortly after, DUHAC veteran Becky Woods crossed the line, with a final lap where Becky picked off several athletes, moving from outside the top eight all the way to claim fourth place. Women’s captain Irene Gorman finished the race in thirteenth place, a fantastic result considering the long layoffs she has endured from injuries.
As always four women are needed to score for the event. Luckily DUHAC had to look no further than Bryony Treston, one of Trinity’s most decorated female athletes. Bryony took time out from her busy schedule at St. James Hospital to compete in her last Intervarsity competition. Thankfully Bryony’s seventeenth place finish was enough to secure the team victory for the TCD women, narrowly beating out UCC and UCD. Niamh Donnelly and Aisling Ahern of TCD also finished strongly in the event knocking back UCC and UCD athletes to allow DUHAC women enough points to take home the team gold. The trophy commonly known as the “The Cheetahs” was donated to the IUAA by DUCAC chairman Cyril J Smyth. To put into perspective the magnitude of a victory in the highly competitive cross country Intervarsity’s, the last time Trinity women took home the Cyril J. Smyth trophy; Ireland was still getting use to a new currency, the euro, in 2002.
The final event of the day was the male race, watched on by a large crowd of spectators, including secondary school students who competed earlier in the day at the National Irish schools cross country championships. Similar to the women’s race, it was clear who the front runners were, when Jason Fahy, WIT, and John Travers, AIT, took an early lead. In the end Jason Fahy edged out Travers to take home the gold medal. The first Trinity athlete home was DUHAC Harriers captain Sam Mealy finishing up in 6th place. Strong finishes from Donal Foley (14th) and Liam Tremble (28th) gave Trinity hope of securing another team medal. The final three scorers for theTrinity men’s team were former DU Triathlon club captain John Reidy (41st), Colum O’Leary (47th) making his Duhac Intervarsity debut and finally Kieron Sexton (54th). Despite having 6 scorers in the top half of the field, it was not enough to earn a team medal as the Trinity men narrowly missed out and had to settle for fourth place, a great result the men’s highest finish in ten years.
The UCD men’s team was victorious in the team event, with DCU finishing second and UCC finishing third. Athletics captain Garrett Dunne narrowly missed out in scoring on the DUHAC men’s team, moving up from his usual 400m sprints to finish strongly in eighty seventh place. In the end the overall competition for which they combine the aggregate scores of the male and female events was won by UCD with 75 points, with TCD finishing in fourth on 89 points. The next Intervarsity event will be the Outdoor Track and Field, hosted by University College Cork to take place on the 12th and 13th of April. There is no doubt that theTrinity athletes will look to recreate the same success at Cork, which was achieved in Jordanstown. To quote DUCAC chairman Cyril J Smyth on a fantastic day for Trinity Athletics; “The Cheetah’s are coming home”.
