Guest Post: DARRAGH SETS IRISH U23 RECORD – NOW SEVENTH ON ALL-TIME LIST ...by John Walshe

DARRAGH SETS IRISH U23 RECORD – NOW SEVENTH ON ALL-TIME LIST ...by John Walshe

Corkman Darragh McElhinney set an Irish U23 record for the 5000m of 13:17.17 on Saturday night when finishing fifth at the IFAM Outdoor meet in Belgium. This broke John Treacy’s previous record of 13:26.5 which was also set in Belgium all of 44 years ago.

More importantly, it now moves the Glengarriff native to seventh on the Irish all-time list – ahead of such distance legends as Eamonn Coghlan, Ray Flynn and Marcus O’Sullivan.

It’s also interesting to note that the average age of the six runners ahead of McElhinney – Alistair Cragg (13:03.53), Mark Carroll (13:03.93), Frank O’Mara (13:13.02), John Doherty (13:14.17), Brian Fay (13:16.52) and John Treacy (13:16.81) – was 27 when they achieved their fastest times whereas Darragh only turned 21 last November, the month before he finished second in the European U23 cross-country and led the Irish team to the gold medals.

Speaking at the River Lee hotel two weeks ago where he received the Cork City Sports Athletics Person of the Year Award for 2021, Darragh said the goal for the summer ahead was the European senior championships in Munich next August and his first priority was to get inside the qualifying time of 13:24 which he certainly did in style on Saturday night.

Now based in Dublin where he is coached by Emmett Dunleavy and competes with the UCD club, he explained that the Europeans and not the World Championships in July were the main focus. “At the start of the year we sat down and decided that I would be a lot more competitive at a European senior stage than on a world stage. As I’m still under 23, the aim is to make a European final this summer and then hopefully come back next summer and the summer after for the Paris Olympics with a bit of experience gained and to be fitter and stronger than I’m now.”

In presenting Darragh with his two awards – he was also the December winner - Liam O’Brien, Technical Director of the Cork City Sports and one of the judges, paid him the following tribute: “Darragh has shown great promise from a very young age. He was one of the youngest winners of these awards and is a great competitor, having won schools’ internationals and has come though the progression you would like to see a person coming through.

“I know he is not resting on his laurels because there is another step or two to go to where he can potentially get and there is no doubt in the world he’ll be getting more of these awards. He is an athlete that had promise and has now fulfilled that promise which he had shown.”

Prophetic words indeed.  

A list of previous guest posts from John Walshe can be seen HERE