Dublin International produces fast times

Dineen and Caulfield set up titanic battle for Nationals!

Darren Dineen competing for his college Harvard earlier in the year.

July 29, Santry, Dublin Both Daniel Caulfield and Darren Dineen smashed their personal bests and marked themselves out as Sydney contenders in a fantastic race at the Dublin International yesterday(Saturday 29th).In the fastest 800m race on these shores for many years the Russian Dimitri Bogdanov took victory in a close fought encounter dipping under the 1.46 mark with 1.45.98.He was followed home closely by Zach Whitmarsh of Canada in a time of 1.46.07.Both these two athletes are on their contries Olympic teams.Whitmarsh won the Canadian trial and Bogdanov was second is his behind the great Yuri Barzakovskiy.Indeed this was the Russians second fastest run of the year as his best is 1.45.76.Whitmarsh`s season`s best before this race had been 1.47.39 and he has to be happy with his run.

As for the Irish, all eyes were on Daniel Caulfield and Darren Dineen.Caulfield went with the pace in the early stages and was 4th at the bell with Dineen hanging back in around 6th or 7th.However with 250m to go Dineen started to move and caught Caulfield 50m out where Caulfield and Darren fought tooth and nail to the line, Daniel just getting there.Their previous personal bests had been 1.47.70 for Caulfield and 1.47.35 for Dineen.They finished with times of 1.46.84 and 1.46.88 respectively.Speaking with Darren`s father, Mike on the phone last night he told me that Darren will now look to achieving the A standard of 1.46.30 before the National Championships on August 17.

Reale puts in another fantastic performance

The men`s 1,500m was void of any major talent and Ireland`s best representitive Ken Nason came home 4th in a slow time of 3.46.61.The real story was who came home 9th.It was Ireland`s future star Liam Reale who sliced 5 seconds off his best time to finish in a time of 3.49.08.This was a brilliant result and only 1 second outside the time for the World Junior Championships in Chile.Liam is still only 17 and is very young for a Junior.I spoke to him on the phone only 20 minutes after the race:

We came through the first lap in 61 but from there on it really picked up.I just tryed to hang in there.When I`d finished I thought I`d done 3.52/3.53 but to do 3.49 is really amazing.I`m really pleased.There was some amount of elbows flying in there.It was the roughest race I`ve ever been in but I came home strongly and I`m happy even if I feel like sh*t now!

Aoife Byrne qualified for Chile in the 1,500m with a time of 4.21.36 three seconds inside the qualifying time.David Kelly just missed out.He ran 1.50.77 in the B Men`s race over 800m.The time is 1.50.00.

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