PHIL HEALY LEFT her recent Covid-19 positive in the rear-view mirror as she stormed to victory in the 400m heats at the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Belgrade.
The Cork runner reeled in and picked off Dutch frontrunner Lieke Klaver to win her heat in a time of 51.75 seconds.
Healy’s time was the third-fastest overall on Friday morning, bettered only by European Indoor champion Femke Bol and double Olympic champion Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas.
Healy will be back on track for the semi-finals at 5.35pm this evening, with the draw still to be confirmed pending the outcome of an appeal in another of this morning’s heats.
“The prep certainly wasn’t ideal, picking up Covid last week,” a delighted Healy told RTÉ Sport’s David Gillick.
“I even pushed out my departure to fly Wednesday instead of Tuesday because we wanted a tester session on Tuesday and, to be honest, it was crap.
“There was half of Tuesday when I wasn’t doing the individual, and then I had to weigh up, because I do have the relay later this weekend and I want to give the best performance there as well. We decided we have nothing to lose.
🏃♀️ @philhealy2 won her heat of the 400m at #WorldIndoorChamps and spoke to @DavidGillick afterwards #rtesport pic.twitter.com/jxD5RU5BF0
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) March 18, 2022
“I was even talking to Derval O’Rourke yesterday and she sent me a voice note and I was playing it before I went in to the call room. She was like, ‘The hard work is done, last week is just a few days out of years of hard work, so just go out there,’ and that’s exactly what I did and put it behind me.”
There was disappointment for Sophie Becker who finished fourth in her own 400m heat in 53.47 seconds, which was not enough to see her progress.
Sarah Healy couldn’t reproduce anything close to her Irish U23 record performance as she finished fifth in her 1500m heats in a time of 4:12.44, while Mark English also failed to fire in the 800m heats as he finished fifth in 1:51.35 — more than four seconds short of his season’s best.
Ireland internationals Devin Toner and Lindsay Peat were our guests for The Front Row’s special live event, in partnership with Guinness, this week. The panel chats through Ireland’s championship chances ahead of the final round of Guinness Six Nations matches, and members of the Emerald Warriors – Ireland’s first LGBT+ inclusive rugby team – also join us to talk about breaking down barriers in rugby. Click here to subscribe or listen below:
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