John Travers brought glory to Donore Harriers with an excellent victory in the Dublin Senior Men’s Cross-Country Championship at St. Anne’s Park in Raheny last Sunday.
John was always to the fore and at the halfway point of the 6 laps, 10.000m course it was down to just 3 runners in the leading group. John still had the close attention of Clonliffe duo Stephen Scullion and Brian McMahon. As McMahon begin to slip back Travers moved up a gear on the 5th lap to open a gap on Scullion. And John held his pace to the finish line to record a time of 30.50s with Scullion 2nd on 30.56s and McMahon 3rd on 31.28s.
There was 3rd place team medals for Donore as 4 other black and white singlets finished in the top 20. Lee Van Haeften came an excellent 13th in 32.31s; Mark Dooley had a strong last lap to gain to 14th in 32.41s; Ray Hynes, on his Donore debut, came 19th in 32.53s having recently recovered from injury; and team captain Eric Keogh finished 20th in 33.01s having been 10th in the early stages of the race. With six-to-score it was left to the ever consistent Gavin Keogh to close the team as he finished 35th in 34.17s.
Clonliffe Harriers 55 points were 19 points ahead of Raheny Shamrocks with Donore Harriers (102) a clear 3rd ahead of Rathfarnham (133), Liffey Valley (271) and Crusaders (284). This was the first Dublin Championship XC team medals won by Donore Harriers senior men since the mid 90s. And the team was beaten by arguably the two best teams in the country for men’s distance running. Incidentally, just 3 teams had 15 athletes in the top 20. Clonliffe had 6, Raheny had 4 and Donore 5.
The non-scoring finishers for Donore Harriers were Dave Heffernan 38th in 34.52s and Andrew Ledwith 42nd in 35.21s. Andrew was also making his Donore debut and was clearly feeling the worst of being in the recovery stages of a chest infection. There are better days ahead for both Andrew and the team!
The ladies team of Sorcha and Ide NicDhomhnaill, Sinead Lambe, Grace Kennedy and Samantha Conroy pulled out another great team effort for Donore. First home for the ladies was Sinead, finishing strong in 12th place, Sorcha (14th), Ide (17th), Grace (19th) and Samantha (28th) to make it a Donore double and bring back the ladies bronze. This is a great start to the season for this team who performed so well together last year.
The junior men’s team finished in 5th place (95 points) behind winners DSD (22). The team was led home by Sam Allen who slipped back in the later stages of the 6,000m race to come home in 17th position in a time of 21.03s. Just one place further back was Oisin Fitzgibbon (21.14s) who placed 10th in the incorporated u/18s championship. Stephen Gavin (21.50s) placed 26th overall and 16th in the u/18s, whilst Ryan Kiernan came 34th in 22.41s. It should be noted that both Oisin and Stephen were stepping-up in age group as both are eligible to run in next month’s u17s Dublin XC championship.
Big congratulations also to Alma Hanevy who completed the New York marathon in tough, windy conditions with a fantastic 7 minute PB in 3:26:37 and Teresa Brophy 4:30:24.