6th July 2019 at Tullamore Harriers’ Stadium
Longford Athletics Club had four athletes entered in the National Junior and U23 Outdoor Championships on 6th July 2019 at Tullamore Harriers’ Stadium. The Junior category comprises athletes aged 16-19 years with three age groups competed together in one category as U20.
All the best upcoming talent in athletics from across the country were in completion on the day, fine tuning their preparations ahead of the European U18 and U20 Championships later this month in Baku, Azerbajan and Boras, Sweden respectively.
As predicted High Jump Champion Nelvin Appiah lived up to the Athletics Ireland preview that was posted ahead of the event “Nelvin Appiah (Longford) is sure to grab the crowd’s attention in the men’s high jump”. He got the crowd behind him supporting him with a clapping beat as he took Gold at 2.00m in the Junior Men’s High Jump.
Nelvin adds this National title to his collection as he has already had a busy summer winning the All-Ireland Schools Senior Boys High Jump with new pb of 2.10m and competing with team Ireland at the European Games in Minsk with the highlight finishing third in his group and adding 7 team points.
Sixteen year old Adeyemi Talabi clocked 12.32 seconds as she won her 100m heat and advanced to the Junior Women’s final finishing seventh place in the extremely talented line-up that included Ireland’s top sprinters Rhasidat Adeleke and Patience Jumbo-Gula. Yemi recently clocked an extremely impressive new 100m personal best of 11.89 seconds competing at the BAUHAUS Junior Gala in Mannheim, Germany.
Aaron Kelly and Gospel Idahor both competed in the 100m and 200m heats but missed the qualification cutoff for finals. Gospel continues to improve in Triple Jump finishing in 8th place over with new pb of 9.96m which is a 12 inch improvement from her gold medal Connacht performance in early June (9.61m).
Further National completion continues for the next few weekends in July at Tullamore which will see several of Longford AC’s talented teenage athletes take to the track at the Irish Life Health Juvenile All-Ireland Championships in sprints and middle distance events.
