TEAM IRELAND PICKED up two medals at the European U23 championships in Gavle, Sweden today – an impressive haul given the fact that their previous medal at the competition came back in 2011.
Eilish Flanagan won silver at the 3,000m steeplechase, and it was followed with a bronze medal for Nadia Power in the women’s 8oom.
The latter was drenched in drama, however, as Power was disqualified immediately after the race for a supposed obstruction.
The incident in question occurred at the 1.05 mark of the clip below.
.@JemmaReekie 🔥🔥🔥
— European Athletics (@EuroAthletics) July 13, 2019
And she will be back on track tomorrow in the 1500m final in #Gavle2019! pic.twitter.com/PUKrpKj4lA
Power was reinstated on appeal, however, and the medal was reinstated.
“Obviously I was over the moon early on, they announced I was third and then someone called me over ten minutes after the race to say I was disqualified”, she said afterward.
“I was lucky enough to have everyone on my side for the appeal, we even got British Athletics backing me up because I was meant to have pushed the winner. I obviously appealed it as she ended up winning it.
“The staff for Athletics Ireland were fighting for me, everyone had to deal with my mood for an hour, but we can celebrate now.”
Today’s double brings the total Irish medal haul at these championships to eight, having started back in 1997.
Elsewhere, Sharlene Mawdsley finished 7th in the women’s 400m final, while in the men’s 5,000m final, Fearghal Curtin was 17th.
In the same race, Michael Power was 18th and Pierre Murchan was 21st.
Mark Smyth, meanwhile, finished eighth in his 200m semi-final.
Earlier in the day, Donagh Mahon had a best of 2.02m in high jump qualification while Eoin Sheridan had a best of 51.38m to finish 19th overall.
The men’s 4x400m relay team of Cathal Crosbie, Craig Newell, Shane Irwin and Chris O’Donnell were 10th overall in 3:09.02 – just missing out on the final by 0.4 of a second.
