Ciarán Ó Lionáird wins bronze at the Euro Indoor Championships...

In the final of the mens 3,000m at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Gothenborg , Sweden, Ciarán Ó Lionáird finished in a personal best time of 7:50.40 to finish third for the bronze medal.

Ciarán pictured with Ciarán Ó Catháin, president of Athletics Ireland. Photo by Kieran Carlin of Finn Valley AC

For most of the race, Ciarán stayed near the back of the pack out of trouble and picked up the pace with about 400m to go when he followed the eventual winner Ibrahimov. At the bell and 200m to go, it seemed as if it was a two horse race but the Spaniard Juan Higuero surged in the last few metres to take the silver.

Considering all the injury problems that he had in 2012, Ciarán is really beginning to show what a fantastic talent he is.

Post race interview with Will Downing here...


For the other Irish athletes today, it was a mixed bag. Fionnuala Britton in the 3000m went through to the final and Amy Foster went through to the 60m semi-finals.

Ciara Everard in the 800m finished 3rd in the womens 800m and also went through to the final. It was however a photo finish for that last qualifying spot...

As you can see, Ciara is #6. I'm not sure how they separated them but Ciara got the nod.

In the other 800m semi-final, Rose-Anne Galligan went out after finishing 5th but ran a personal best time in the process.

In the mens 400m, there was some drama as Brian Gregan got spiked as the field converged after 150 metres. Just before the 200m mark, the Ukrainian athlete Burakov stood on Gregan's shoe and spiked him in the process....

...an injury that required several stitches. Hopefully, it won't be any more serious than that.

In a post race interview, Brian Gregan said......“My raceplan was to get to the bend, and to get to the break third. My plan was going perfect, with perfect pace, around 21.6-21.7 to the bell. Unfortunately I got spiked. A guy just completely took me out of it, and there was no coming back from it. He actually stood on my ankle and ripped me down my leg. I’ve had nine stitches. It was poor form.”

Full results for today in an earlier post.